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AIR TRAVELERS 

From Early Beginnings to Recent 

Achievements 




J 



Santos-Dumont’ s Motor-Driven Plane 





1 


AIR TRAVELERS 


From Early Beginnings 
to Recent Achievements 






A 


Mr LAURA A: LARGE 

■MB i li i gm. 4 l * 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

HAROLD CUE 

AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 



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BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 

COP/Zj 

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Copyright, 1932 , 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 


All Rights Reserved 


Air Travelers 




PRINTED IN U. S. A. 


APR 19 i932 ' 

©CIA 50937 d \ 




CONTENTS 


Make-Believe Flyers . 

• 

• • 

PAGE 

. 11 

The Wooden Pigeon . 



. 13 

A Ship of the Air 



. 14 

Wings Like Birds 



. 15 

Flying Chariot . 



. 17 

The First Flyer 



. 18 

Hot-Air Balloons 



. 20 

A Hydrogen Balloon 



. 23 

A Dangerous Monster 



. 26 

Barnyard Passengers . 



. 28 

The First Man Takes a 

Ride . 

. 30 

The Hydrogen Balloon Takes Passengers 33 

Trying for Distance . 

• 


. 35 

The First Man Killed 

• 


. 38 

A Balloon That Could 

Be 

Steered. 

. 42 

Zeppelins 

• 


. 44 

A Prize-Winner . 

• 


. 50 

A Man-Carrying Glider 

• 


. 54 

Engine-Power 

• 


. 57 

More Gliding 

• 

• • 

. 60 


s 







6 


CONTENTS 


The Wright Brothers 

• • 

PAGE 

65 

France to England 


71 

A Try-Out ..... 


75 

World War Flying . 


77 

Air-Mail ..... 


85 

The Atlantic Crossed 


89 

A Non-Stop Atlantic Flight 


94 

Crossing the Atlantic From East to 

West 

98 

From London to Australia 


104 

Across the United States . 


111 

Kidnaped ..... 


118 

A Race With the Sun 


121 

Lighting the Way 


124 

Around the World 


128 

The Los Angeles .... 


138 

The Shenandoah Destroyed 


140 

Flights in Africa 


142 

Richard Byrd Flies to the North 

Pole . 

146 

A Dirigible Balloon Passes Over the Pole 

154 

Alone ...... 

• • 

157 

Chamberlin and Levine 

• • 

164 

The Good-Will Messenger 

• • 

171 

Pacific Ocean Flights 

• • 

175 







CONTENTS 7 

PAGE 

A Costly Race ...... 178 

The Wilkins Flight.180 

A Sad Story of the North . . . 183 

The Southern Cross ..... 187 

The Bremen . ...... 189 

The First Woman Across the Atlantic . 194 

Fighting for Altitude .... 202 

A Round-Trip Flight .... 208 

The Little Old Flying-Hotel . . . 213 

A Birthday Trip . . . . .219 

The Graf Zeppelin ..... 224 

Richard Byrd Flies to the South Pole . 228 

Frank Hawks Sees America in His Glider 235 

A Speed Record ...... 242 

In a Second-Hand Bus .... 248 

Piccard’s Plunge ..... 250 

Post and Gatty Around the World . 253 

A Non-Stop Flight, New York to Turkey 259 

A “Flying Engine” ..... 261 

The Pacific Ocean Crossed in Non-Stop 

Flight ....... 267 

The Akron ....... 272 

The Future—? ...... 277 









ILLUSTRATIONS 


Santos-Dumont’s Motor-driven Plane 

Frontispiece 


FACING PAGE 

A Model Aeroplane of 1709 . 

. 16 

The Montgolfiers’ Successful Balloon 

. 20 

A Passenger Balloon in 1793 . 

. 34 

The First Dirigible .... 

. 42 

Lilienthal’s Glider .... 

. 54 

The First Plane that Flew j 


A Modern Flying Scout J 

66 

Bombed in Mid-air 

. 80 

The Skeleton of a Giant Dirigible . 

. 120 

Commander Byrd in the Doughnut Boat 

. 148 

The Josephine Ford and the Norge . 

. 156 

Colonel Lindbergh at Curtiss Field. 

. 160 

The American Clipper 

. 172 

The DO-X at Miami 

. 190 

The Graf Zeppelin at Los Angeles . 

. 224 

The Akron over Lakehurst 

. 272 


9 





I 


AIR TRAVELERS 


MAKE-BELIEVE FLYERS 

Long ago, men liked to make up stories 
about flying. They told of winged horses, 
magic carpets, and gods with wings on their 
feet. 

One story was about Daedalus and his son 
Icarus, who were prisoners in Crete. Daedalus 
made a pair of wings for himself and a pair for 
his son. 

“With these wings, we may be able to make 
our escape,” the father said to the son. Then, 
as he attended to the last fastenings, the father 
gave a word of advice. “Keep away from the 
sun,” he cautioned. 

Not long after, the two climbed to the top 
of the prison wall, and to their great joy found 
that the wings worked perfectly. Up they went 


12 AIR TRAVELERS 

and over the sea, as free as birds, and even 
happier. 

Daedalus crossed the body of water and 
made his escape. Icarus enjoyed flying upward 
so much that he forgot what his father had said, 
and drew too near the sun, the great heat of 
which melted the wax that fastened his wings. 

Down fell Icarus into the sea, and that was 
the end of one of the flying gods. 


THE WOODEN PIGEON 


Four hundred years before Christ, lived 
Archytas, a learned man of Taranto—a scholar 
of geometry. 

Archytas made a wooden pigeon that could 
fly by machinery. 

The bird had one great weakness. If it fell, 
it could not lift itself up again. 

Archytas tried to make it behave more like 
a real bird, but could not. 

Then he went back to his geometry studies. 


>3 


A SHIP OF THE AIR 

“Water will hold up a vessel. Why should 
not air do the same with a special kind of ship ? 
Make the ship of a large hollow globe of copper 
or other metal wrought very thin to make it as 
light as possible. Fill it with ethereal air or 
liquid fire, then launch it from some high point. 
Like a ship on the water, the vessel should float 
on the air.” 

Roger Bacon, born in 1214, said this. 

His idea was a good one, but he did not try 
to carry it out. 


* 




WINGS LIKE BIRDS 


Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452, filled 
notebooks with pictures and designs of his 
ideas about flying. 

“Why not make flapping wings to be used 
as a bird uses his wings?” Leonardo da Vinci 
asked. 

He made sketches to show how this could be 
done. With the legs, the wings were to be thrust 
downward. With the arms, the wings could be 
raised. 

It looked easy enough in the picture, but did 
not work well. As compared with his weight, 
a man’s muscles are not so strong as those of a 
bird. 

Leonardo da Vinci invented the aerial screw 
which is used to-day. With paper propellers, he 
was able to fly small models. 


i6 


AIR TRAVELERS 


He made sketches for a machine ninety-six 
feet in diameter. But this machine could not be 
raised from the ground without some kind of 
a motor, and at that early time there were no 
motors for use in flying. 



Photograph by Key done. 

A Model Aeroplane of 1709. 

The designer expected the sun to have sufficient attraction for the precious stones in the 

overhead grid to raise the ship. 



















































A FLYING CHARIOT 


“Make four hollow copper spheres, very 
light and thin. Attach them to the four corners 
of a car and add a sail. Remove the air from the 
spheres, to make them rise, and the car will go 
up with them. It will be a flying chariot.” 

In 1670, Francesco Lana said this. Had he 
tried to carry out the idea, he would have failed, 
for the copper spheres would have been too thin 
to stand the pressure of the air about them. 


THE FIRST FLYER 


A French locksmith named Besnier, in 
1678, made two wooden bars to rest upon his 
shoulders. Muslin wings were fastened to the 
ends of these bars. The bars were pulled up and 
down by his arms and legs, while the wings 
opened flat on the down stroke and folded ver¬ 
tically on the up stroke. 

Besnier’s plan was to jump from different 
heights and let his wings carry him as far as 
possible. 

A window-sill was his first starting-place. 
A second-story window was the next. When 
brave enough, he jumped from a garret. Over 
the roof of a small cottage not far away he 
soared, and landed safely. 


THE FIRST FLYER 


19 

Besnier, in this way, became the first success¬ 
ful flyer—his apparatus a crude glider. 

Besnier did not carry his work farther. He 
sold his bars and wings to a travelling show¬ 
man, and withdrew from the world of flying. 


HOT-AIR BALLOONS 

Two brothers, Joseph and Stephen Mont¬ 
golfier, sat before the fire of their home near 
Lyons, in France. They were watching the 
smoke make its escape upward through the 
chimney. 

“Do you suppose it could ever be made to 
carry something along 4 ?” Joseph asked. 

“The idea sounds reasonable,” Stephen made 
answer. 

The brothers kept thinking about it. They 
decided to catch smoke in a bag and see what 
would happen. 

The father of the two Montgolfiers had been 
a paper manufacturer, and had left the business 
to his sons. The brothers took one of their small 
paper bags and held it over the fire, where it 
would fill with smoke and hot air. 


20 



Photograph by Keystone. 


The Montgolfiers’ Successful Balloon. 







































HOT-AIR BALLOONS 


21 


The boys fastened the top of the bag, let go 
of it, and up to the ceiling it went! 

Joseph and Stephen took other bags for out- 
of-door tests. Always when filled with smoke, 
the bags rose up into the air. 

The boys repeated their tests many times. 
They kept on making larger balloons, too. At 
last they had one that was one hundred and ten 
feet in circumference. 

They invited the public to see what they had 
learned. 

The huge linen bag was lined with paper 
and decorated with designs. In a hole in the 
ground, a fire of wool and straw was made. 
The bag was held tightly over the fire until 
filled with smoke and gases. When released, it 
shot upward, like a soft bullet! 

Six thousand feet, or more than a mile, the 
balloon rose, and travelled a mile and a half 
before coming down to earth. 

This was in June, 1783, and little was known 


22 


AIR TRAVELERS 


about what really made the fire-balloon ascend. 
Like the Montgolfier brothers, every one 
thought that the smoke and gases which came 
from the fire had carried the balloon upward. 
Now we know that the balloon went up because 
it was filled with air that was hotter than the 
cold air around it, and therefore lighter. 

No matter what the Montgolfier brothers 
thought to be the reason for their success, they 
had been able to make the first balloon, called 
a “Montgolfier,” at that time. 


A HYDROGEN BALLOON 


Since hydrogen was known to be a very light 
gas, a scientist named Charles decided to use 
it in a balloon. He got two brothers, whose last 
name was Robert, to help him. 

The Robert brothers found that the new gas 
would slip through a paper-and-linen bag such 
as the Montgolfier brothers had used. Instead, 
they made a bag of silken material known as 
lutestring, which was varnished with dissolved 
rubber. 

Next came the making of the hydrogen and 
the filling of the bag. This last proved to be the 
hardest part of all. The hydrogen could get 
through the tiniest sort of an opening, and 
seemed bent on making its escape. 

Four days the men worked to get their bal¬ 
loon filled. 


23 


AIR TRAVELERS 


24 

At last the work was completed, and a dem¬ 
onstration was planned, just two months after 
the Montgolfier brothers had exhibited their 
hot-air balloon. 

The hydrogen balloon was carried in a pro¬ 
cession from the Place des Victoires, where it 
had been filled, to the Champ de Mars, where 
it was to ascend. Before daybreak, with torches 
to light the way, the balloon was carried in a 
cart, with a heavy guard at the front and rear. 

Nowadays, if such a large amount of inflam¬ 
mable hydrogen were being carried so near an 
open flame, every one would run away. At that 
early time, people did not realize how great the 
danger was. 

Instead of running, a crowd joined the pro¬ 
cession. Fortunately, the flame did not ignite 
the hydrogen. 

On the Field of Mars, more than one hundred 
thousand people gathered on that afternoon, 
although there was a pouring rain. 


A HYDROGEN BALLOON 25 

At five o’clock a cannon was fired, and the 
balloon rose. 

In just two minutes it had disappeared into 
a dark cloud more than three thousand feet 
above the heads of the excited throng. 

Once more it appeared, then was lost to view. 


A DANGEROUS MONSTER 



Fifteen miles from its starting-place, the 
first hydrogen balloon began to descend. 

“Look!” Some peasants working in a field 
pointed to the large balloon about to alight 
near by. 

The peasants did not know what balloons 
were, and they were frightened. When some of 
the gas with which the balloon was filled began 
to escape through a tiny hole, they were more 
frightened than ever. The noise sounded like 
that of an animal breathing heavily. 

“What is this?” the peasants cried. “Is it 
a dangerous monster come to destroy us? 
Away with it!” 

The peasants seized their pitchforks and 
other tools within reach. They dashed at the 
balloon! They pierced holes in it and tore the 

26 


A DANGEROUS MONSTER 27 

fabric into shreds! Then they tied the wrecked 
balloon to the tail of a horse, and it was dragged 
here and there until nothing was left but scat¬ 
tered pieces! 


BARNYARD PASSENGERS 

The King of France ordered the Montgolfier 
brothers to send a balloon up into the air for 
him. 

The Montgolfiers made a larger bag than 
they had used before. They hung a wicker bas¬ 
ket below. 

“Who wants to ride in the basket?” the 
brothers asked. 

“Not I!” was the answer from all quarters. 
One balloon had just burst in mid-air. Another 
had descended in a strange field and had been 
attacked by farmers with pitchforks. Besides, 
no one had ever taken a ride in a balloon. 

“We shall let a few barnyard friends make 
the trip,” the Montgolfiers said. 

A duck, a sheep, and a rooster were fastened 

28 


BARNYARD PASSENGERS 29 

to the strong wicker basket. The balloon, with 
the basket, was sent up into the air. 

“The animals will be killed!” some said. 
“They may be having a pleasant ride,” others 
suggested. 

It did not take long to find out. Two miles the 
balloon travelled, then landed gently. 

The barnyard friends had not been killed. 
They were as safe as could be and, for all any 
one knew, had enjoyed the ride. 

All but the rooster. He had been kicked by 
one of the other passengers. 


THE FIRST MAN TAKES A RIDE 

“I am not afraid to take a ride,” a French¬ 
man, named Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier, 
announced, a short time after the barnyard pas¬ 
sengers had returned in safety. 

“Very well, if the King is willing, you may 
be the first one to try out balloon-riding,” was 
the answer. 

The King was opposed to the idea of allow¬ 
ing any one of his subjects to risk his life in this 
way. 

“If any one is to take the chance, let it be a 
criminal,” the King said. “If he comes back with 
his life, he can be pardoned.” 

“It would be a great honor to be the first 
man passenger. I should like very much to try,” 
Monsieur de Rozier argued. 

At last the King gave his consent. 


30 


THE FIRST MAN TAKES A RIDE 31 

The balloon chosen was a fire-balloon of the 
kind which the Montgolfier brothers had made. 

At first, Monsieur de Rozier went up in a 
captive balloon, held to the earth by ropes so 
that it could not go up too high nor travel away 
from the starting-place. 

Later, with the Marquis d’Arlandes for a 
companion, Monsieur de Rozier ascended in a 
free balloon. 

The balloon was a large one, seventy-four 
feet high and forty-eight feet in diameter. A 
wickerwork gallery three feet wide surrounded 
the bottom opening, which was fifteen feet 
across. A brazier was hung from the balloon by 
iron chains. On this brazier the flyers had to put 
fuel when they wanted the balloon to rise. 

The two men stood on the balcony and waved 
their handkerchiefs as the balloon rose. 

“Will the brave men reach the ground again 
in safety? 5 ’ That is what every one wanted to 
know. 


32 


AIR TRAVELERS 


The balloon kept on rising and floating away 
from its starting-place. At one time it began 
to descend into the Seine River. Monsieur de 
Rozier and his companion added straw to the 
fire under the balloon opening. The hot air 
made by the burning of the straw made the 
balloon rise. Higher up, a strong current of air 
carried the flyers over the water in safety. 

The balloon caught fire in one place. 

But, with all the danger, the men were un¬ 
harmed, and after rising to a height of five 
hundred feet and travelling a distance of one 
and three-quarters miles, the balloon de¬ 
scended. 

The flight was made on November 21, 1783. 
A new kind of passenger-service was begun on 
that day. 


THE HYDROGEN BALLOON 
TAKES PASSENGERS 

A short time after the de Rozier passenger 
flight, one of the Robert brothers ascended in a 
hydrogen balloon with the scientist named 
Charles. 

Instead of a mile and three-quarters, these 
men were able to travel twenty-seven miles. 
Instead of rising five hundred feet, they reached 
a height of almost two thousand. 

They descended just as the sun was setting. 
Robert left the balloon, but Charles remained 
behind and went up again. 

It was a quick ascent, this time—up as high 
as two miles, where it was cold, although the 
air was warm down on the earth. A second sun¬ 
set came into view, too, along the way. 

The balloon remained aloft only fifteen min- 


33 


AIR TRAVELERS 


34 

utes and descended again three miles from the 
place where Robert had left it after the first 
flight. 

This test, and others which followed, showed 
that the hydrogen type of balloon was more ef¬ 
ficient than the fire-balloon which the Mont¬ 
golfiers had been using. 

Charles did other work that is seen in bal¬ 
loons of to-day. He invented the valve at the 
top of the bag, through which the gas can be al¬ 
lowed to escape should the flyer wish to lower 
the balloon. 

Hanging the car from a metal ring about 
the bag was his idea, also. 



Photograph by Keystone. 

A Passenger Balloon in 1793. 




m 




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TRYING FOR DISTANCE 

A Frenchman named Blanchard wanted to 
be the first to cross the English Channel by air. 

A Dr. Jeffries, of Boston, heard of the plans. 

“I should like to go, too,” he told the French¬ 
man. 

“I should rather try it alone,” was the an¬ 
swer. 

“If you will let me go, I will help pay for the 
trip,” the American promised. 

“It will cost hundreds of dollars.” 

“I should like to go, anyway.” 

“Very well.” 

The two left Dover, England, on January 
7, 1785. All went well for about an hour. The 
weather was fine and the wind steady. As they 
sailed away from the English coast, in their 


35 


AIR TRAVELERS 


36 

slowly revolving car, they were able first to 
see France on one side, then England on the 
other. 

When about a third of the way across, the 
ship began to descend rapidly. It seemed that 
the balloon was doing its best to get into the 
water instead of over it. 

The men had to throw overboard three sacks 
of ballast, pamphlets, biscuits, apples, oars, the 
rudder, all the ornaments on the inside and out¬ 
side of the car. Then, bit by bit, all their cloth¬ 
ing was discarded. 

The flyers put on their cork jackets. 

“Ready for the waves,” this meant. 

Then at last the balloon began to rise. It 
went so high that the travelers grew very cold, 
since their clothing had been thrown overboard. 

Suddenly the balloon floated into a strong 
current of air which carried it as far as the coast 
of France and into the branches of a tall tree. 

No matter what the landing happened to be, 


TRYING FOR DISTANCE 37 

the twenty miles of the English Channel had 
been crossed for the first time by air. 

A monument now marks the landing-spot, in 
the forest of Guines, not far from Ardres. 


THE FIRST MAN KILLED 


“I am going to try to cross the English chan¬ 
nel from France to England,” announced de 
Rozier, a short time after Blanchard and Jef¬ 
fries had made their successful crossing in the 
opposite direction. 

With great care, de Rozier went about the 
task of getting ready. He had decided to use a 
new kind of flying ship. A hydrogen balloon 
was to be made to float above a Montgolfier, or 
fire-balloon, which would hang about five feet 
below. It was to be a sort of double balloon. 

The Montgolfier, de Rozier made of plain 
green silk, lined with paper. The gallery which 
encircled the Montgolfier was fifteen feet wide, 
made of small osier twigs tightly woven. 
Within the gallery was stored food, with char- 

38 


THE FIRST MAN KILLED 39 

coal, straw, and wood for tending the fire of the 
lower balloon. 

Much interest was shown in the voyage 
which was to be made in a new kind of craft. 

“Let me go with you,” certain friends of de 
Rozier begged. 

De Rozier had promised to take a man named 
Romaine, and had to refuse all the others. One 
disappointed man offered two hundred louis 
d’or to Romaine for the privilege of being al¬ 
lowed to take his place as a companion. 

While making preparations, even though 
others wished to risk taking the trip, de Rozier 
seemed to feel that he would never reach Eng¬ 
land in safety. 

“I would give twenty thousand pounds,” he 
said, “if I had never set out to perform such a 
dangerous task.” 

“Then why not give up the voyage?” he was 
asked. 

“Please don’t mention such a course,” the 


40 AIR TRAVELERS 

reply came back. “I would rather meet death 
than give up anything which I have begun! 

“But,” he went on to say, “if I do reach Eng¬ 
land in safety, I will never, never fly again.” 

By June all was ready, and early on the morn¬ 
ing of the fifteenth, thousands of people gath¬ 
ered to see the departure. 

At twelve minutes after seven a cannon was 
fired, and the double balloon rose straight into 
the air. 

Shortly after, it could be seen travelling 
westward, evidently carried by a current of air 
blowing in that direction. 

The spectators watched eagerly. 

At the end of half an hour the occupants of 
the car were seen to be doing something with the 
fire-basket. A cloud of smoke arose and a blue 
flame seemed to wrap itself around the balloon. 
The fire from the lower Montgolfier had ig¬ 
nited the explosive hydrogen gas of the upper 
balloon! 


THE FIRST MAN KILLED 41 

Needless to say, the unfortunate flyers did 
not survive this accident. The man who had 
been the first balloon passenger was also the 
first to lose his life in a flying disaster. 


A BALLOON THAT COULD 
BE STEERED 

After de Rozier’s accident, almost nothing 
was done with balloons for the next ten years. 
Then, little by little, men began to take up the 
work again. 

Henry Giffard, a brilliant engineer, wanted 
to make a balloon that could be steered. 

He made a small, light-weight steam-engine. 
With this to furnish the needed power, on Sep¬ 
tember 24, 1852, Giffard rose from the Hippo¬ 
drome in Paris. 

A fire to keep the steam-engine running 
burned brightly beneath the large balloon filled 
with the inflammable hydrogen. Like many 
others of his time, Giffard did not realize how 
great this danger was. 

Fortunately, nothing came of it on that trip. 


42 



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The First Dirigible 





A DIRIGIBLE BALLOON 43 

The balloon rose awkwardly and ploughed 
through the air. It is true that the speed was only 
six miles an hour, but Giffard was able to direct 
the course of the flying ship, and that was his 
greatest wish. 

He had succeeded in making the first diri¬ 
gible balloon. 


1 


ZEPPELINS 


Count Zeppelin was a German soldier who 
had studied military ballooning. When he re¬ 
tired from the army he wanted, more than any¬ 
thing else, to make an airship that could be 
of use in time of war. 

He found that the kind of dirigible balloon 
used by Santos-Dumont had many disadvan¬ 
tages. If her bag should be punctured in any 
part, it would lose its gas, which was stored in 
one container. When out of shape because of 
air pressure, the Santos-Dumont dirigible bal¬ 
loon had been found hard to propel. 

Count Zeppelin designed a dirigible balloon 
that could not change in shape on the outside. 
It consisted of a stiff framework of aluminum 
alloy which was both strong and light. Within 
the framework was a bag containing many gas 


44 


ZEPPELINS 


45 

compartments and covered with a tightly 
stretched fabric. LZ-1 (Luftschiff Zeppelin-I) 
the rigid dirigible balloon was called. The 
LZ-1 was thirty-eight feet in the greatest diam¬ 
eter and four hundred and twenty feet long— 
the largest craft that had ever been built. 

For it Count Zeppelin made a floating han¬ 
gar, which he launched on Lake Constance, in 
Switzerland. 

Friedrichschafen, on Lake Constance, was 
the scene of the first trial flight, in July, 1900. 
The Zeppelin could travel only eight and a 
half miles an hour, at first, but later attained 
a speed of seventeen miles an hour—by far 
the greatest speed yet reached by an airship. 
Count Zeppelin became a popular hero and 
had no trouble in getting money from the public 
for the building of other dirigible balloons. 

The LZ-2 was built with a part of the money 
so raised. The motors of this craft gave eighty- 
five horsepower instead of sixteen, and showed 


46 AIR TRAVELERS 

that the internal-combustion engine was a prac¬ 
tical one to use. 

The LZ-2 did not last long. In one accident 
she was damaged by wind, in another, destroyed 
by it. The Count nearly withdrew from aero¬ 
nautics, so great was his disappointment. 

But he persevered. He built another dirigible 
balloon within nine months after the LZ-2 
disaster. 

The LZ-3 proved to be very successful. 

The LZ-4 was an improvement on any of the 
Zeppelins that had been built before. It had two 
motors of one hundred and ten horsepower each, 
and could carry fuel to last sixty hours. 

In 1908, on the 4th of July, the LZ-4 trav¬ 
elled to Lucerne and Zurich, then back again to 
Lake Constance, a distance of two hundred and 
thirty-five miles, in twelve hours’ time, at an 
average speed of thirty-two miles an hour. 

The German Government offered to buy the 
LZ-4 if she could be made to remain in the air 


ZEPPELINS 


47 

twenty-four hours and could land and rise again 
according to certain provisions. Working 
toward this end, the L!L-4 was in flight one day, 
when she was forced to stop because of motor 
trouble and gas leakage. A sudden squall arose 
and in the violent storm she was torn loose from 
her mooring. Adrift, with motor trouble, her 
ascent could not be controlled. She rose quickly, 
and the hydrogen in her gas cells swelled in the 
thin air of the high altitude. An explosion in 
the cells, followed by a sudden burst of flame, 
left nothing of the whole structure except metal 
wreckage. 

The flight of the LZ-^ had been only three 
hours and fifteen minutes short of the govern¬ 
ment’s requirement for acceptance. Destroyed 
when so near her goal, the sympathy of the 
whole country was with Count Zeppelin. Ten 
million marks, or two and a half million dol¬ 
lars, was raised for his work. The Emperor 
visited the hangar at Lake Constance to see the 


AIR TRAVELERS 


48 

LZ-3. He praised Count Zeppelin for what he 
had been able to do, and embraced him publicly. 
He decorated the Count with the Order of the 
Black Eagle, and allowed the Crown Prince to 
take a trip in the LZ-3. With four army officers 
to observe, Count Zeppelin travelled to Munich 
and back. This successful flight was made in 
March, 1909, from which time the LZ-3 was 
known as the “S.M.S. Zeppelin-I”—the first 
of an aerial fleet. 

In 1910 came the first Zeppelin to be run for 
pleasure. It had three motors, a comfortable 
cabin, and a restaurant. Under the name 
Deutschland, it carried many aerial passengers 
on a number of successful trips, at a speed of 
forty-five miles an hour. 

In June, 1910, with twenty-three passengers, 
the Deutschland left Dusseldorf for a few 
hours’ run. Things went well for a time. Then, 
one by one, the motors broke down because of 
a heavy gale that was blowing. The wind seized 


ZEPPELINS 


49 

the airship, and it crashed down into a forest. 
The Zeppelin was wrecked as it struck the great 
trees, but every one aboard was uninjured, and 
reached the ground by means of a rope-ladder. 

As with the others, this mishap did not keep 
Count Zeppelin from going on with his con¬ 
struction work. In all, he had built twenty-six 
Zeppelins by 1914, some of which attained a 
speed of fifty miles an hour. Improvements were 
also made in steering arrangement, construc¬ 
tion, and machinery. 

In 1910 the German Air Travel Company 
was formed for the purpose of running passen¬ 
ger excursions. Over seventeen thousand pas¬ 
sengers were carried on the four air-liners be¬ 
longing to this company, and one hundred 
thousand miles were covered during the four 
years of the company's existence. 

The Zeppelin had come to hold an important 
place in the science of flying. 


A PRIZE-WINNER 


Sometime during the year 1901, a member 
of the French Flying Club announced that he 
would give a prize of one hundred thousand 
francs to the man who should have such good 
control of a dirigible balloon that he would be 
able to travel from the Flying Grounds at Aero 
Club Park, around the Eiffel Tower and back, 
within half an hour. It was a distance of seven 
miles. 

A number of men had failed, when a young 
flyer from South America decided to try for the 
prize. He was Santos-Dumont, who lived in 
Paris and had taken up flying as a sport. 

Santos-Dumont tried out a number of bal¬ 
loons in getting ready for the contest. Instead 
of Giffard’s steam-engine, he used the petrol 
motor of the automobile. To make his craft go 


50 


A PRIZE-WINNER 


5i 

where he wished, there were the steering-rud¬ 
der, ballast, and guide-rope. 

Santos-Dumont’s first balloon caught in 
some trees. Two days later, while returning 
from a high altitude, it began to fold up like 
a pocket-knife and descended rapidly. 

“Catch the trailing rope and run against the 
wind!” Santos-Dumont cried out to some boys 
who were flying kites. 

The boys understood at once. The speed of 
the descending balloon was reduced as the rope 
was pulled against the wind, and Santos-Du¬ 
mont came down safely. 

Another time, engine back-fire ignited the 

. \ 

balloon-bag filled with hydrogen. Santos-Du¬ 
mont put out the flames with his Panama hat, 
and continued on his way. 

Santos-Dumont built a second balloon, 
which doubled up and descended in much the 
same way that the first had done. By chance, the 
flyer was uninjured. 


52 


AIR TRAVELERS 


A third balloon worked fairly well, but a 
fourth had its propeller placed so that Santos- 
Dumont had to fly with a gale blowing on him 
all the time. Then he became ill with pneu¬ 
monia. After flying the fourth balloon, he had 
a number of improvements in mind. 

With what he called the “Santos-Dumont 
Number 5,” the flyer decided to try for the prize 
that had been offered. 

He chose thin Japanese silk as material for 
the bag. From the balloon, eighty-two and a 
half feet long, was hung a wickerwork car. For 
power, the petrol motor was used. 

In this latest dirigible balloon, Santos-Du- 
mont reached the Eiffel Tower in ten minutes. 
He rounded it and started home. Then a strong 
head-wind arose suddenly and the balloon 
ended its flight in a chestnut tree. 

A few weeks later, when the balloon had been 
repaired, a fresh start was made. This time, 
Santos-Dumont reached the Tower in nine min- 


A PRIZE-WINNER 


53 

utes’ time, but on the way back the gas valves 
began to leak and the hydrogen escaped rapidly. 

Santos-Dumont kept on, but suspension 
wires caught in the propeller because the bal¬ 
loon sagged so much. The “Number 5” began 
to travel back toward the Tower, and to descend 
as well. It slapped against the roof of a hotel 
and exploded. Paris firemen rescued the flyer. 

Later he made a sixth dirigible balloon. With 
this, he reached the Eiffel Tower, rounded it, 
and, with only twenty-nine seconds left of the 
half-hour, landed at the Aero Club Flying 
Grounds. 

As for the prize—since Santos-Dumont was 
a wealthy man and did not need the money, a 
part of it he gave to the poor people of Paris. 
What was left went to the employees who had 
been helping him. 


A MAN-CARRYING GLIDER 


While balloons were being tried out, men 
were also at work on heavier-than-air craft. 

About the year 1800, Sir George Cayley, an 
Englishman, built a glider that he believed 
would work well. 

He called his coachman. 

“There is room for a flyer on this glider/ 5 he 

* 

said. “I should like you to have the honor of 
being the aeronaut. 55 

The coachman protested. 

Sir George Cayley explained that he was es¬ 
pecially anxious for the coachman to be the 
driver on the glider’s first trip. 

The coachman gave in at last. 

As he ran downhill with the wax-covered, 
linen-bamboo glider, the machine was caught 
by a gust of wind that sent it forward nine 


54 



Photograph by Keystone. 

















A MAN-CARRYING GLIDER 55 

hundred feet across the valley! The coachman 
had all he could do to keep his balance and posi¬ 
tion. 

All the while, Sir George Cayley was watch¬ 
ing. When the coachman had travelled the nine 
hundred feet, the inventor remembered for the 
first time that he had never worked out a plan 
for a safe descent of the glider. 

Down to the ground with a crash it came, 
while the inventor rushed to the scene with all 
possible haste! 

It happened that the coachman was unin¬ 
jured. He shook from himself the tattered pieces 
of linen and the broken bits of bamboo. Then 
he addressed his employer. 

“Please, Sir George, 5 ’ he said, “I wish to give 
notice. I was hired to drive, not to fly.” 

The coachman did not know, nor did he care, 
that he had been the first aeronaut who had ever 
taken off from the ground and risen in a heavier- 
than-air machine. 


AIR TRAVELERS 


56 

As for Sir George Cayley, he hired another 
coachman and went on with his work. 

“If one had an ultra-light engine of great 
strength, its power could be used to propel 
gliders,” he said. The steam-engine Sir George 
Cayley knew to be too heavy to be used with 
success. He set about the task of designing an 
engine himself, but was unable to make it work 
well. 

The biplane which Sir George Cayley made 
next also failed, but his ideas were good and 
set other men to thinking about how power 
might be applied to heavier-than-air craft. 


ENGINE POWER 


A company of four men was formed in Eng¬ 
land to work out a means of driving heavier- 
than-air craft by engine power. 

One by one, three of the members of the com¬ 
pany dropped out, because the jeers and ridi¬ 
cule which greeted them everywhere were more 
than they could stand. People at that time had 
little faith in heavier-than-air machines. Much 
of the company’s work had to go on at night un¬ 
der cover of darkness. 

William Henson, one of those who withdrew 
from the company, made plans for a one-winged 
plane—the monoplane, which we have to-day. 
Henson’s plans were later found to be excel¬ 
lent, but he never completed his invention. 

The time came when, of the company of four 
men, only John Stringfellow was at work. At 


57 


58 AIR TRAVELERS 

the end of five years, he had a glider-plane 
model which he thought could be driven by en¬ 
gine power. Its wing spread out ten feet and 
was two feet in width. There were two pro¬ 
pellers. A one-cylinder engine had been in¬ 
stalled to furnish the driving power. 

In June, 1848, John Stringfellow first tried 
out the model in a vacant factory room. He 
launched the plane by letting it run down an 
inclined wire. After soaring for just a moment, 
the plane fell back with a thump. A broken tail 
had to be repaired after this try-out. 

The second time the plane left the inclined 
wire it flew the entire length of the room and 
struck against some canvas, which had been 
placed as a sort of backstop. 

John Stringfellow flew his model outdoors 
next. It travelled one hundred and twenty feet 
before it descended. 

This flight made the inventor a famous man, 
although there was room for much improve- 


ENGINE POWER 


59 

ment in his work. He had designed a power- 
driven plane that could be made to fly success¬ 
fully. 

Twenty years later, he was able to make an 
engine that was lighter in proportion to its 
power than any that had ever been turned out. 
The engine had enough power to propel an air¬ 
craft, but could not be put into general use. 
With the beginning of a flight, the rush of wind 
always blew out the flames under the engine- 
boiler. 

John Stringfellow was trying to correct this 
trouble when he died. 

It remained for others to carry on the work. 


MORE GLIDING 

“He is a freak!” This is what the young boys 
of the neighborhood said when Otto Lilienthal, 
a thirteen-year-old German lad, made his first 
attempt to fly. 

Otto Lilienthal, together with his brother 
Gustav, had made wings out of wooden frames 
covered with linen. With these attached to his 
arms, Otto would rush down a hill, flapping the 
wings as though he were after something. 

Otto did not like to be ridiculed. When he 
found the rest of the boys making fun of him, 
he made his flights by moonlight. 

When Otto was nineteen years of age, he and 
his brother made another set of wings. These 
were mounted on Otto’s back, and were moved 
by cords connected with his legs. 

60 


MORE GLIDING 


61 


The brother, Gustav, grew tired when this 
much had been done. But Otto was not ready to 
stop. He made a glider of peeled willow rods, 
with a strong, wax-covered fabric stretched 
over them. Then, before he tried to fly with his 
glider, he wrote and published a book, which 
told what he had learned about flying during 
his many years of study. 

After all this, Otto Lilienthal felt that he was 
ready to try out his latest glider. 

Between the wings of the glider was an open¬ 
ing through which Lilienthal passed his head 
and arms. His body hung free, below the plane 
of the wings. 

From a spring-board on the top of a hill, 
Lilienthal would glide down on the air, and 
land at the foot of the hill. This practice went 
on until he could balance himself as one does in 
riding a bicycle. 

The hills of Berlin were Lilienthal’s next 
practice-grounds. He built a hut at the top of a 


62 AIR TRAVELERS 

hill, in order that he might take off from its 
roof. 

When he found the winds unfavorable much 
of the time, Lilienthal moved once more. With 

the soil turned up by a contractor who was 

«* 

building a canal, Lilienthal had an artificial 
hill made. The hill was about fifty feet in 
height. Since the surrounding country was flat 
and bare, this made a very good place for trial 
flights. 

Otto Lilienthal made over two thousand 
gliding flights from this and other hills during 
the years 1891-1896, first with gliders having 
one plane, later with biplane gliders. The man 
who had been called “freak” at an early day, 
became the best aviator of the time. 

Lilienthal was the first to learn how to keep 
a glider stable by moving his legs about under 
the machine. He was able to control the balance 
of his plane in this way for a distance of three 
hundred feet. He could also turn about in the 


MORE GLIDING 63 

air quickly, by throwing his weight to the side 
towards which he wanted to go. 

After gliding for five years without power, 
Lilienthal had a motor built. Enough carbon 
dioxide to drive him through the air, he had 
stored in a tank. This, he figured, would keep 
him in the air four minutes. 

The time came to try out the new motor, but 
Lilienthal wanted to have one more gliding 
flight first. 

So far, there had been no serious accidents. 
But before making this last gliding flight, 
Lilienthal had applied a horizontal rudder to 
his biplane glider. To move this rudder, he had 
fastened a rope by a band to his forehead. To 
lift the rudder and make the glider go upward, 
he would have to move his head forward. To 
make the rudder return to its normal position, 
he would have to move his head backward. 

Lilienthal had reached a good altitude, when 
the wind stopped blowing for a moment, and 


64 AIR TRAVELERS 

the glider stalled in mid-air. Because of the 
new rudder, Lilienthal became confused and 
lost control. The plane shot down suddenly 
and, with a crash, struck the ground below! 

The fall had been from a height of fifty feet, 
and Lilienthal’s career was over, but his work 
made flying much easier for those who came 
after. 


THE WRIGHT BROTHERS 


When Wilbur and Orville Wright were 
young boys, their father, one day, brought 
home a toy helicopter, which he let fly to the 
ceiling. 

The boys were delighted with this toy, and 
made it fly until it could no longer be made to 
work well. Then they made helicopters of their 
own. Some of these flew easily. The larger ones 
were not a success. 

The Wright brothers came to like the idea of 
flying, while playing with the toy helicopters. 
Since the larger ones did not work well, the 
brothers decided that helicopters could never 
be made large and strong enough to carry men. 
Then they began to make kites. In an old bicycle 
shop they made many different models which 

were tried out, one by one. 

65 


AIR TRAVELERS 


66 

f 

And all the while the brothers were reading 
everything they could find on the subject of 
flying. The German, Lilienthal, with his glider, 
interested them most. They agreed with him 
that one should learn to sustain himself in the 
air before applying power to his aircraft. 

The Wright brothers started to make gliders. 
Their first one had two new features:—a hor¬ 
izontal rudder placed in front of the operator, 
and a method of warping the wings that would 
keep the glider from tilting sideways when fly¬ 
ing or turning. With slight changes, this inven¬ 
tion is found on all modern planes. The “aile¬ 
ron,” it is called. 

At Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina, the sandy 
ground is good for the landing of gliders. Each 
day the winds blow in much the same way. The 
Wright brothers practised flying in this place 
for three years. During this time they made 
nearly a thousand glides and performed many 
experiments. 



Courtesy of Mr. Gralmme- White. 

The First Aeroplane that Flew. 

One of the earliest of the Wright biplanes to make a sustained flight. 


i 



Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. 

A Modern Fighting Scout. 









THE WRIGHT BROTHERS 67 

By 1903, the brothers decided that they had 
learned enough about balancing. “Now for a 
strong but light motor to drive our gliders,” 
they agreed. 

Here there was trouble, which the Wright 
brothers ended by making a motor of their own. 
In this they succeeded so well that they were 
able to build one with even more power than 
they had hoped to be able to get. 

With the motor installed, and a number of 
minor difficulties cleared up, the machine was 
ready for flying in December. It looked much 
like a glider, but it was larger and stronger, 
since it had to carry a much greater weight. 

“Who shall be the first to carry the machine 
up into the air, in case it will go up?” This ques¬ 
tion the brothers decided at the top of a high 
sand dune to which they had taken their ma¬ 
chine. A coin was tossed to see which one should 
be the pilot. Wilbur proved to be the winner. 

He seated himself in the plane, and moved 


AIR TRAVELERS 


68 

the controls that would set the engine in 
motion. For thirty-five or forty feet the new 
power-driven plane ran along the track from 
which it was to rise. Then a slip-wire caused it 
to jump its rail. It climbed a few feet, stalled, 
and fell to the ground. 

Repairs had to be made after this trial, but 
three days later, the persistent brothers were 
ready once more. 

On December 17, 1903, with Orville Wright 
as pilot, the machine ran along its track to the 
end of the rail. This time, driven by its four- 
cylinder motor, it rose into the air, and sailed 
along for twelve seconds before dropping down 
into the sand again. 

Only twelve seconds of flying, but it was 
long enough to prove to the Wright brothers 
that they had won their fight. They had made 
the first man-carrying machine that could rise 
by its own power and fly freely. 

Only five persons saw this flight. During all 


THE WRIGHT BROTHERS 69 

the years in which they had been at work, the 
Wright brothers had kept their plans secret. 

“People would have thought us crazy,” they 
explained later. “The only birds that talk are 
parrots, and they are not birds of high flight.” 

Just after the first flight, the Wright broth¬ 
ers sent news of their success to their father in 
Dayton, Ohio. They gave no accounts of it to 
any of the newspapers, although a reporter 
from a Virginia paper read of it, and published 
an account in The Virginia Pilot. Even then, 
no one was greatly interested. It was not until 
four years later that the Wright brothers began 
to receive honors for their work. 

The two thought little of this. They had 
taken up flying as a sport, and they had been 
having plenty of this, along with their study 
and work. They kept on making more flights, 
and, as time went on, made great gains in en¬ 
durance and speed. 

In 1908 Wilbur Wright made a trip to 


AIR TRAVELERS 


70 

France, where he won a prize of four thousand 
dollars, and succeeded in staying in the air 
longer than had ever been done before. His rec¬ 
ord was two hours, eighteen minutes, and thirty- 
three seconds; the distance seventy-seven miles, 
twenty-two hundred and eighty feet. 

In America, meanwhile, Orville Wright had 
been working for a twenty-five thousand dollar 
prize, offered by the United States Government 
for a military plane that would be able to carry 
two men, fuel for one hundred and twenty-five 
miles of travel, and be capable of a ten-mile 
cruise at a speed of forty miles an hour. 

Able to fly successfully in the model which 
he had made, Orville Wright, in August 1909, 
was awarded the prize of twenty-five thousand 
dollars, with much honor besides. 


FRANCE TO ENGLAND 

“A thousand pounds to the first man who 
shall cross the English Channel from France to 
England, in an airplane,” a London newspaper 
announced. 

About one hundred and twenty-five years 
had passed since the twenty-mile stretch of 
water had been crossed from West to East. In 
the opposite direction, no crossing had yet been 
made. 

Louis Bleriot decided to try to make the 
flight. 

Bleriot had met with one disaster after an¬ 
other in the course of his flying career. It was 
said that he had been in as many as fifty acci¬ 
dents. When he decided to try to make the 

Channel crossing, he had already lost ten flying 

71 


* 


AIR TRAVELERS 


72 

machines in one way or another. The eleventh 
plane, he had fitted out for the trial. 

When all was ready, on the early morning 
of July 25, 1909, Bleriot had to hobble to his 
plane on crutches. He had just been burned in 
an explosion of gasoline, a few days before, and 
had injured one of his feet. Bleriot had been un¬ 
willing to wait for the burn to heal. Another 
daring aviator had been trying to get off first, 
and the contest had really turned out to be a 
race. 

Bleriot tossed aside his crutches, as he 
climbed into his monoplane. He started up the 
motor, rose one hundred feet, and headed for the 
shore of England. 

Bleriot had neither maps nor compass. In 
case of fog, he might easily have been lost. If 
the wind had changed its direction, he might 
have been blown out to the North Sea. 

There were no parachutes at that time. 
Bleriot would have had only one chance of sav- 


FRANCE TO ENGLAND 


73 

ing his life, should he have been forced into the 
sea. Into the middle of the fuselage he had 
placed an inflated rubber cylinder five feet 
long. This would have helped the plane to keep 
afloat. 

No accident befell Bleriot, this time. He 
headed straight toward what he thought to be 
the shore of England, and was able to keep 
going in the right direction. 

A French torpedo boat, with a speed of 
twenty-six miles an hour, had been assigned 
to follow him. Bleriot, in his monoplane, trav¬ 
elled along at the rate of forty-two miles an 
hour. He passed the destroyer, and, for a time, 
could see no ships of any kind. 

This did not last long. Bleriot happened to 
be steering in the right direction, and within 
thirty-seven minutes he reached the coast of 
England, near the city of Dover. Through an 
opening in the cliff, a safe landing was made, 
although the plane was somewhat damaged. 


74 


AIR TRAVELERS 


Because of the early hour, only one person 
happened to be present when the landing was 
made. He was a policeman—the first to con¬ 
gratulate Bleriot. There soon appeared other 
policemen, and a few khaki-clad soldiers from 
a camp near by. 

But since that first day, many people visit the 
landing-place each year. A monoplane carved 
in stone has been sunk into the site, as a re¬ 
minder of the early flight. 


A TRY-OUT 

At a nine-day Air Meet, held on Long Island 
in 1911, the first bag of mail was carried by air¬ 
plane. Earle Ovington had been appointed of¬ 
ficial air-mail carrier of the United States Gov¬ 
ernment, and on September 23rd, in a Bleriot 
monoplane, he carried the first bag from the 
flying-field at Nassau Boulevard to Mineola, 
a distance of a little less than ten miles. 

Because his craft was only a single-seater and 
there was no baggage compartment, the bag 
of mail was carried on the flyer’s lap. Since 
landing would have been difficult under these 
circumstances, the mail-sack was dropped into 
the field at Mineola, where the postmaster stood 
waiting to receive it. 

Dropped from a height of several hundred 
feet, the bag ripped open several times, while 


75 


AIR TRAVELERS 


76 

letters and postal cards were scattered in all 
directions. As the air-mail pilot turned his plane 
in the direction of his home field he could see 
the postmaster rushing around to gather up the 
scattered mail—six hundred and forty letters 
and twelve hundred and eighty postal cards. 

During the time of the Air Meet, over forty- 
three thousand pieces of mail were carried, and 
much interest was shown in the new form of 
mail delivery. 

“Within a year, air-mail planes will be trav¬ 
elling the sky daily,” many said. 

But this service did not come in so short a 
time. For the first few years money was lacking. 
Then came the World War. Seven years, in all, 
went by before regular air-mail service was es¬ 
tablished. 


WORLD WAR FLYING 


One daring feat of the World War was the 
bombing of a German airship shed, located in 
an important position, near the city of Ghent. 

In the car of a captive balloon, at some alti¬ 
tude, marksmen had been stationed. On the 
ground, anti-aircraft guns had been placed on 
guard. 

The aviator travelled at a high altitude, and 
arrived above the shed in the early evening. 
In his plane he had three powerful bombs and 
a few hand-grenades. 

After some reconnoitering, the fight began. 

The aviator could see the airship-shed very 
clearly below him, and dropped a bomb from 
his height of six thousand feet. 

At once, the men in the car of the captive bal¬ 
loon opened fire. 

From the ground came a storm of shots. 


77 


78 AIR TRAVELERS 

The flyer could see that he was too high for 
accurate bombing work. To go lower in the 
midst of the rapid-firing enemy guns would in¬ 
vite certain death. 

As he flew in a circle above, he could see that 
just one sort of maneuver might be successful. 
He decided to take his chances. 

He flew exactly above the balloon from 
which the marksmen were firing. He began to 
descend rapidly and, as he flew downward, 
kept his machine going around in small, steeply 
banked spirals, by means of which he remained 
so directly above the bag of the balloon that he 
was out of sight of the marksmen below. He 
fired his second bomb, but missed his mark. 

When just over the balloon, the flyer directed 
his plane outward with a rapid move. He passed 
as quickly as he could, then, in small spirals, 
kept his machine moving j ust under the balloon. 

The men on the ground could not fire on him 
as much as they wished, for fear of wounding or 


WORLD WAR FLYING 


79 

killing their comrades in the kite-balloon. The 
observing marksmen above were hindered in 
their firing because of the danger of hitting the 
men gathered about the airship shed below. The 
excitement was becoming more and more in¬ 
tense. 

In the confusion, the airman flew down until 
within two hundred feet of the ground, then 
dropped the last of his heavy bombs upon the 
shed. 

The bomb struck the roof, and from within 
the shed came the sound of a heavy explosion. 

Every second counted with the airman. He 
steered away and, with all possible speed, re¬ 
turned to his base. There were bullet holes in 
the wings of his plane, but he had received no 
injury. 

The airplane had once more been put to good 
use, this time in war. 

At the opening of the war, the planes that 
each country had to use were clumsy and could 


8 o 


AIR TRAVELERS 

make little altitude. They were slow, too. But 
improvements were begun at once. 

At first, men flew to observe the movements 
of enemy troops, or to locate artillery place¬ 
ments or other maneuvers. But neither side was 
willing to allow enemy planes free flight over 
its own country. This led to frequent combats 
in the air. 

As the war advanced, airplanes of three kinds 
came into use: the fighting scout, the observer, 
and the bombing plane. 

Some of the scout-planes could travel at a 
speed of one hundred and forty miles an hour, 
and were very nimble in maneuvering. Many 
of the later ones could dive safely at a speed of 
three hundred miles an hour. All were 
equipped with machine-guns, from each of 
which, a thousand bullets a minute could be 
projected. 

It was dangerous work, because the men had 
to fly at low altitudes to make note of troop 



“Graphic,’ 


London. 


mm* 

■*» 


Li 


Courtesy of the 

Bombed in Mid-Air. 

The first Zeppelin destroyed by an aviator single-handed. The airman, 
a British naval flight-lieutenant, was hurled in a somersault hy 
the explosion of his victim, but landed safely. 






WORLD WAR FLYING 81 

movements, new artillery positions, or changes 
in the trench system of the enemy. 

Many of the observation planes carried spe¬ 
cial cameras with which to take photographs. 
During the last twelve months of the war, 
nearly two hundred and sixty-five thousand of 
these were taken by British photographers be¬ 
hind the German lines, on the Western front 
alone. 

The bombers were powerful machines, strong 
enough to carry a large number of bombs over a 
wide area. 

The first bombing of the war came in Sep¬ 
tember, 1914, when the German lieutenant, 
Immelmann, bombed Paris and dropped a note 
on a sandbag. The note read: 

“people of paris! surrender! the Ger¬ 
mans ARE AT YOUR GATES. TO-MORROW YOU 
WILL BE OURS!” 

The first bombing planes were like any of 
the other planes, except that the pilot carried a 


82 


AIR TRAVELERS 


few bombs with him. These he dropped wher¬ 
ever he thought they might serve the best pur¬ 
pose. Later, special planes were made to carry 
bombs in racks below the wings. Some of the 
bombs weighed one hundred and ten pounds 
each, and were released by a special gear. 

In Palestine, just before the British were 
to make their final attack on the Turks, airmen 
were directed to fly back of the Turkish 
trenches to bomb the aerodromes. 

The British planes were able to carry out this 
order so well that none of the Turks’ machines 
could take off. With their “eyes” taken away, 
the Turks had to fight blindly, and were easily 
routed. 

Kite balloons were of use in the war, for ob¬ 
servation purposes. 

Zeppelins did some bombing work, but they 
were a disappointment to the Germans. At first, 
the Zeppelins ran little risk because the anti¬ 
aircraft forces had not been organized. Later, 


WORLD WAR FLYING 83 

they were forced to higher and higher levels to 
avoid gunfire and attacks from airplanes, which 
usually had the best of it in an encounter. At a 
great height the cold was so intense that engines 
froze if they stopped. Some of the airships were 
frozen up, and drifted over France and Bel¬ 
gium. 

The Germans had hoped that the Zeppelins 
would damage the enemy greatly. Their dis¬ 
couragement about this, as well as the entrance 
of the United States into the war, helped to 
weaken their spirit, and to make the winning 
of a victory much easier for the Allies. 

When the LTnited States entered the World 

War in 1917 it had only two hundred training 
planes, and not one of these was fit for service 
in battle. And, although the Wright brothers 
were Americans, no planes were being built in 
the United States. 

Between December, 1917 and November 16, 
1918, a total of ten thousand four hundred and 


84 AIR TRAVELERS 

seventy-two planes had been delivered to the 
American fighting forces! 

Before the war, such movements as loops, 
Immelmann turns, side-slipping, and rolling 
were unusual stunts. When the war had been 
going on for a while, the fighting-scout per¬ 
formed these feats as a part of his everyday ac¬ 
tivities. 

The war, it seemed, left aviation with more 
and better aircraft, and with highly skilled 
men to pilot them. 


AIR-MAIL 

On May 15, 1918, a gathering of people was 
on hand at Potomac Park Flying Field in Wash- 
ington, D. C., to witness the beginning of the 
first regular United States air-mail service. On 
the edge of the field were army ships, ready to 
ascend and give honor to the mail-carrying 
plane. Officials of the Army and of the Navy 
were present. President Wilson and his wife 
were in the company, as was the Postmaster- 
General. 

It had been arranged that four airplanes 
should take charge of the first day’s deliveries. 
One of the planes was to carry mail from the 
city of Washington to Philadelphia, where a 
second plane would take it on to New York 
City. A third airplane would start from New 

85 


86 


AIR TRAVELERS 


York, and carry its load to Philadelphia, from 
which place a fourth plane would deliver the 
mail to Washington, D. C. 

At eleven o’clock the mail pouches were 
brought out and put into the forward part of 
the plane which was to make the Washington- 
Philadelphia part of the delivery. The pilot 
climbed into the cockpit. Some one came for¬ 
ward to hand the aviator bouquets of flowers, 
which had been presented by President Wilson 
and the Postmaster-General. A mechanic made 
his way to the front of the plane. He took hold 
of the propeller and gave it a quick turn. There 
was a choking and sputtering of the motor. 
Then it stalled. Something was wrong. 

The mechanic seized the propeller and gave 
it a second turn. Still no roaring of the motor. 

Hastily, mechanics looked over the engine, 
but could see nothing that might be causing 
trouble. 

Another mechanic took his turn at swinging 


AIR-MAIL 87 

the propeller, but with no better success than 
the others had had. 

At last a shout from one of the men explained 
everything. The gas tank was empty! 

At once, fuel was brought for the motor, and 
the air-mail plane took off without further de¬ 
lay. 

Plans had been made for a telephone message 
to be sent to the watchers at Washington, as 
soon as the plane should be sighted on its pas¬ 
sage over Baltimore. 

Thirty minutes passed, and no message came. 

The officials looked worried. What had hap¬ 
pened? Had there been a forced landing? 

The message came in. South of Washington, 
about twenty-five miles, the pilot had landed. 
He was safe, and the mail was unharmed. The 
only damage to the plane was a broken pro¬ 
peller. 

The people on the Washington Flying Field 
wondered how it could be that the pilot was so 


88 


AIR TRAVELERS 


far south of Washington, when his destination 
had been north. 

Later, they found the reason. The compass 
had failed, and the pilot had lost his way in the 
clouds. 

This one air-mail plane, whose take-off the 
President and the Postmaster-General had 
chosen to see, was the only one of the four 
planes which did not finish its trip successfully. 
The three others went through without mishap, 
and regular air-mail service was begun. 


THE ATLANTIC CROSSED 

When the war had ended, three Curtiss fly¬ 
ing boats were chosen by the United States to 
attempt a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. 

The NC-1, NC-3 , and NC-4 were to make 
the trial. They were biplanes and sister ships. 
The NC-2 had had to be withdrawn. 

Each boat was made with a hull that had 
six water-tight compartments. The first com¬ 
partment contained the navigator's cockpit. 
Just behind, were housed the two pilots. In the 
fourth and fifth compartments were the oil and 
fuel tanks. The cabin of the wireless operator 
occupied the sixth, or stern compartment. 

Liberty engines supplied the power. 

The route which the flying boats were to 
follow had been laid out in stages—from New- 

89 


AIR TRAVELERS 


90 

foundland to the Azores—the Azores to Lisbon 
—Lisbon to Plymouth, England. 

Along the way, at distances of about sixty 
miles, United States destroyers were stationed. 
These were to act as guides, to give protection 
in case of need, or to help with weather reports. 

At 10:03 p.m. on the evening of May 16, 
1919, all was ready, and the flying boats took 
off. 

Lieutenant-Commander Albert C. Read, in 
the NC-4 , soon took the lead, a position his 
plane was able to hold throughout the entire 
course. 

The three planes travelled somewhat to¬ 
gether for the first hour. Then the NC-4 com¬ 
menced to gain on her sister planes, and, by the 
time the first destroyer had been reached, had 
to circle around to give the other flying boats a 
chance to catch up. 

On their way again, the NC-4 gained once 


more. 



THE ATLANTIC CROSSED 91 

At last, Commander Read lost sight of the 
other planes and proceeded on his way alone. 

At 11:25 a.m., Flores Island, the most west¬ 
erly of the Azores, was reached. 

“It was the most welcome sight we had ever 
known,” one of the men on the NC-4 said later. 

At 1:25 p.m., Commander Read alighted in 
the port of Horta, having covered thirteen hun¬ 
dred and eighty miles of the first lap of the route 
without mishap. 

The fates of the NC-3 and of the NC-1 had 
been very different. The NC-1 lost her bearings 
in a fog, and was forced down in a rough sea, 
two hundred miles west of the Azores. Her crew 
was picked up by a Greek steamship on its way 
from Norfolk to Gibraltar. The NC-1 was 
towed for eighty miles, but was left behind 
when the towline parted. 

Forced down on a rough sea, the NC-3 re¬ 
ceived injuries as she struck the water heavily. 
Unable to rise again, she had a chance to show 


AIR TRAVELERS 


92 

what she could do in the way of riding out a 
gale, since no ships could be sighted in any di¬ 
rection. 

In the struggle, one engine was torn loose 
and the hull sprang leaks, but the NC-3 stood 
the test very well and sailed with the wind to 
Ponta Delgada in the Azores, two hundred 
and five miles away. 

The NC-4 had to be prepared for its second 
hop, from the Azores to Lisbon. After a week, it 
was off again, and on May 17, 1919, was made 
welcome by the people of the Portuguese city. 
It was the first time that the Old World had had 
a chance to greet an airplane that had flown 
from America. 

Commander Read did not delay long. Three 
days later he was off on the final lap, from Lis¬ 
bon to Plymouth, England. Engine trouble 
forced the NC-4 down in Spain, but a few hours 
later she was off again. 

Not long after, within sight of a cheering 


THE ATLANTIC CROSSED 93 

throng, and with ships of the harbor whistling 
and shrieking their sirens, the NC-4 passed over 
the entrance to Plymouth Sound. She glided 
down to a successful close of her long trip of 
thirty-one hundred and thirty miles—the first 
crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by air! 


A NON-STOP ATLANTIC FLIGHT 

“Fifty thousand dollars to the ones who 
shall first cross the Atlantic Ocean in a non-stop 
flight. 55 Just before the World War began, this 
offer had been made by the London Times . 

After the Armistice, there were a number of 
flying pairs who wanted to try for the prize. 

One pair of aviators failed when a piece of 
solder in the radiator came loose and plugged 
up the water-circulation system. Engine trouble 
followed, and the men were forced down. Later 
they were rescued at sea. 

A broken axle while taking off spoiled the 
chances of several others. 

Two English war-time flyers, Captain John 
Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitton Brown 
(of American parentage), entered the race 
next. 


94 


A NON-STOP ATLANTIC FLIGHT 95 

About the time that the NC-4 was getting 
ready to make the last lap of her flight, Alcock 
and Brown arrived at St. John’s, Newfound¬ 
land, with a Vickers-Vimy war-time bomber. 

The two aviators assembled the parts of their 
plane and made a number of short trial flights. 
Then, on the afternoon of June 14, 1919, they 
took off, with a northeast wind to help make a 
speed of one hundred miles an hour for their 
bomber. 

Over the ocean there were the usual fogs 
and storms that are always found over that 
great body of water. The men had to fly up and 
down in search of clear spaces. “Upstairs and 
downstairs,” they called it. 

Sometimes they were just over the waves, 
at other times as high as twelve thousand feet. 
Twice, the two airmen came very near plunging 
into the ocean. On one of these times, the pilot 
had all he could do to straighten out his ship 
in time to keep it from splashing into the water. 


96 


AIR TRAVELERS 


Once, when the two men were trying to go 
“upstairs” farther, the two feline mascots, 
Twinkletoe and her black friend, began to 
scratch at the seat as if having great trouble in 
clinging to it. 

Alcock changed the controls at once. 

He had been flying upside down ! 

When the men had been travelling about 
sixteen hours, a small island came into view 
ahead. 

“If that isn’t Easter Island over yonder, I’ll 
drink this jolly ocean dry at one gulp,” Lieu¬ 
tenant Brown said to his companion, through 
their telephone. 

The aviator did not have to try to drink the 
waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He had made no 
mistake about the land that had come into view. 

Within a short time, the two flyers reached 
Ireland. Beyond the wireless station of Clifden, 
they saw what appeared to be a level green 
field. The flyers brought their plane down for 


A NON-STOP ATLANTIC FLIGHT 97 

what they thought would be a comfortable, 
smooth landing. Instead, a sticky bog awaited 
them! The wheels hit the soggy ground and 
the plane sank into it deeply, nose downward, 
end up in the air. 

Partly deafened, and stiff with the cold, Cap¬ 
tain Alcock and Lieutenant Brown clambered 
out, unhurt. The two black cats were also un¬ 
injured. 

Captain Alcock and Lieutenant Brown had 
not only made the first non-stop flight over the 
Atlantic Ocean, which won for them the 
$50,000 prize! They became Sir John Alcock 
and Sir Arthur Brown! 

Their Vickers-Vimy plane was taken out of 
the mud, and given a place in the Science Mu¬ 
seum, South Kensington, London. 


CROSSING THE ATLANTIC FROM 
EAST TO WEST 


The first aerial stowaway selected an impor¬ 
tant ship in which to take his free ride. He chose 
the British dirigible balloon, R-34 , sent by Eng¬ 
land to make the first Atlantic crossing from 
East to West. 

The stowaway had worked on the airship as 
a rigging boy, but it had been decided to leave 
him behind in order to lighten the craft’s load. 
When found, just after the dirigible balloon 
left Ireland, he was hiding between the fifth 
and sixth hydrogen gas-cells, in the rigging. In 
a feverish condition, he was allowed to rest for 
a time. Then he was put to work as cook’s helper. 

And while the first aerial stowaway was 
working at such small jobs as the cook might 
have for him, the ten officers and seventeen men 

98 


FROM EAST TO WEST 99 

of the crew of the R-34 had important work to 
do in order to make the voyage a success. 

The large dirigible had been built in Scot¬ 
land, for use in the World War. She had left 
her shed at East Fortune, near Edinburgh, on 
the early morning of July 2nd, only a few 
weeks after Alcock and Brown had made their 
West to East crossing. 

While mounting slowly, she had been swal¬ 
lowed up in low-lying clouds at a height of only 
one hundred feet. It would have been danger¬ 
ous to fly low in the fog, because of the three- 
thousand-foot hills that cover the north of 
Scotland. Yet it was hard to gain altitude with 
such a heavy load of fuel, without throwing out 
some of it as ballast. 

Cautiously, the airship felt her way up the 
Firth of Forth toward Edinburgh. Through 
bumpy air, she passed over the Firth of Clyde, 
on to the north coast of Ireland, and out over 
the Atlantic. 

> 

3 ) 

7 ’ > 

) ) J 


100 


AIR TRAVELERS 


This is where the stowaway was found. 

At a height of two thousand feet, the R-34 
found a clear passage, with clouds above and 
below. From that time on, much of the travel¬ 
ling was done out of sight of the ocean, with 
only occasional glimpses through the fog. 

Each one on the great airship had his own 
special work to do. In a forward enclosed car, 
under the body of the airship, the navigating 
work was carried on. Enclosed cars, or gondolas, 
housed five petrol engines. 

In command was Major G. H. Scott. An of¬ 
ficer of the British Airship Fleet kept the ship’s 
log. An American Navy Lieutenant had been 
given permission to make the trip as an ob¬ 
server, since the LInited States was planning to 
build a dirigible balloon. 

With electric lighting throughout the air¬ 
ship, and radium-painted instruments, work 
continued, watch on watch, throughout the 
night, as well as in the daytime. 


FROM EAST TO WEST ioi 

For exercise, there was a walk along the six 
hundred and forty-five foot girder, which ran 
from end to end of the framework at the bottom, 
inside the outer covering. Some of the officers 
had to climb a ladder which led to the observa¬ 
tion platform upon the top of the airship. 

For news during the long hours, there were 
the wireless messages. When it came time to 
sleep, there were the hammocks slung from the 
sides of the keel. 

On the first day out, a crack appeared in the 
water-jacket of one of the engines. A mechanic 
repaired this, with the help of a piece of cop¬ 
per sheeting and some chewing gum. 

On the morning of July 4th, icebergs were 
sighted, and in the afternoon, land could be 
seen. It was the coast of Newfoundland. 

On the morning of July 5th, the hardest part 
of the voyage began. Such a high wind sprang 
up that very little progress could be made, even 
with the five engines running. Major Scott had 


102 


AIR TRAVELERS 


to turn inland to avoid the worst of the gale. 
What made this a serious matter was the small 
amount of gas in the tanks. To make matters 
worse, the R-34 ran into a violent thunder- 
storm. Later in the day, still another storm 
made a change in course necessary. 

When Chatham, Massachusetts was sighted 
on the morning of July 6th, not more than five 
hours’ supply of fuel was left in the tanks. 
Should a head-wind have been met at that time, 
there would have been no successful ending 
to the R-34 voyage. 

As it was, the R-34 was able to reach Roose¬ 
velt Field at Mineola, Long Island, with only 
enough gasoline left in her tanks for another 
thirty-minutes’ flight. 

Major Scott had planned to land at New 
York, but with the shortage of gasoline, had 
been forced to choose a nearer landing-place. 

As the R-34 circled above the field, one of the 
officers jumped from the side with a parachute. 


FROM EAST TO WEST 103 

He did this in order to be able to take charge of 
the landing. 

One member of the welcoming party was 
Commander Albert C. Read of the NC-4. 

“God Save the King” was played with great 
spirit while the landing was made. 

The great airship had covered the thirty-two 
hundred miles in one hundred and eight hours 
and twelve minutes, at an average speed of 
thirty miles an hour. 

And the lighter-than-air craft had set up one 
record for Atlantic crossing that airplanes 
would have a hard time to beat. 

For a few days the R-34 remained on exhibi¬ 
tion. Then, once again, she set off—this time 
for England. 

The return trip was made without mishap, 
in seventy-five hours. 


FROM LONDON TO AUSTRALIA 


Bleriot had pushed his machine to the limit, 
to cover the twenty miles of the English Chan¬ 
nel. 

Ten years later, in 1919, when airplanes with 
greater engine-power were being made, Cap¬ 
tain Ross Smith, an Australian airman, was able 
to travel eleven thousand and sixty miles by 
air, from London to Australia! 

A prize of £10,000 had been offered by the 
Australian government, to the first one who 
should make a flight between England and Aus¬ 
tralia in a British-assembled plane, in less than 
thirty days, and before the end of the year. 

Captain Smith had served with the Austral¬ 
ian Flying Corps in the World War. He was 
an experienced airman, and the idea of making 
the longest flight of the time appealed to him. 


104 


FROM LONDON TO AUSTRALIA 105 

Captain Smith succeeded in getting his 
brother and two crew-men to join the expedi¬ 
tion. A Vickers-Vimy converted bomber bi¬ 
plane was chosen. 

Captain Smith and his men left London on 
November 12 th, after planning all the details 
of the proposed trip as carefully as they could. 
They had studied the route, and knew just 
where they might land for fuel and provisions. 

A chain of aerodromes reached as far as Cal¬ 
cutta, and the route had been travelled before. 
Beyond, there would be few landing-places, 
with only one aerodrome, at Batavia, in Java. 

The Australians would have to be pioneer 
airmen over a country where flying was very 
dangerous. 

Captain Smith and his men found mists and 
fogs at the beginning of the flight. While trav¬ 
elling over France, the plane had to climb to 
a height of nine thousand feet to rise above the 
sleet, snow, and fog. At this height the cold was 


io6 AIR TRAVELERS 

intense. Frost gathered on the pilot’s goggles 
and made them useless. The flyer had to face an 
eighty-mile gale without any protection for his 
eyes. His limbs grew numb with the cold, and 
he found it hard to operate the controls. And 
when lunch-time came, the sandwiches were 
found to be frozen hard. 

At Pisa, in Italy, a sticky aerodrome awaited 
the flyers. The men waited a day, but the wet 
weather made conditions worse than ever. Cap¬ 
tain Smith was anxious to get away, to avoid 
being held prisoner by the weather. With eager¬ 
ness, he tried to take off, but as the Vimy rolled 
slowly forward, she came near standing on her 
head. In order to keep the tail of the machine 
down, one of the mechanics threw himself upon 
it. The plane gathered speed and arose, at last, 
from the ground. The mechanic was pulled 
aboard and the Vimy was off. 

Bumpy air over the mountains along the way 
tossed the airplane like a small boat in a storm, 


FROM LONDON TO AUSTRALIA 107 

while driving rains near the coast of Greece 
blinded the men and wet them through and 
through. 

At Cairo, it was learned that Monsieur Pou- 
let, a French aviator, was already on his way to 
Australia. Although he could not compete for 
the prize, he had set out to try to make the first 
flight from the continent of Europe. 

Captain Smith and his men tried to overtake 
Poulet, although the Frenchman had had a start 
of several thousand miles, and was already in 
India. 

The Australian flyers were tired by this time, 
and would have liked to stop to rest a day, but 
the thought of the French aviator ahead caused 
them to proceed with all possible speed. 

Near Calcutta, the Vimy just missed being 
wrecked when a hawk flew against one of the 
propellers. No trace was left of the hawk, but 
fortunately the propeller was only slightly 
damaged. 


io8 AIR TRAVELERS 

At Rangoon, Captain Smith passed the 
Frenchman, Poulet. 

At Signora, on the neck of the Malay Penin¬ 
sula, the aerodrome was half under water, with 
tree stumps everywhere about. Only by chance, 
the wheels of the Vimy missed hitting the 
stumps, although the mechanics had a tail-skid 
to repair after the landing had been made. 
During the night that followed, the machine 
had to be watched by the flyers because of the 
strong gale that threatened to carry the plane 
adrift. The men were soaked to the skin by the 
time morning came, and not one of them had 
been allowed a change of clothing, because of 
the necessity of keeping down the weight of 
the plane. 

When Captain Smith was again on his way, 
and had reached Surabaya in Java, just twelve 
hundred miles from his goal, it seemed that the 
end of the flight had come. The landing-field 
had been made of reclaimed land which had a 


FROM LONDON TO AUSTRALIA 109 

thin, hard crust on top of soft mud. The machine 
broke through the crust easily and was held 
fast in the mud beneath. 

A siege of digging and pulling ended only 
when Captain Smith had procured a large num¬ 
ber of bamboo mats from one of the town offi¬ 
cials. With the mats, a double path was made, 
nine hundred feet in length. When the mats had 
been fastened together and pegged to the 
ground firmly, the plane was once more hauled 
out of the mud and set upon the matting road¬ 
way. The plane could be made to run over the 
mats, and the delighted airmen were soon off 
toward their goal, which was now so near at 
hand. 

When the Australian town of Port Darwin 
was reached, just twenty-seven days and 
twenty hours had passed since Captain Smith 
and his men had begun their long journey. 

The trip had not been all hardship. Friendly 
winds had helped them along a part of the way. 


IIO 


AIR TRAVELERS 


Palm-grown islands of the tropical oceans, the 
greenest of green grass, fertile, irrigated lands, 
and many unusual scenes of beauty had been 
a delight to the eye. 

Later, at the city of Melbourne, there was 
the £ 10,000 prize for Captain Smith and his 
brother, and a rousing welcome when they vis¬ 
ited their home town of Adelaide. 

Last of all, the brothers were made Knights 
as a further reward for their flying work. 


ACROSS THE UNITED STATES 


Lieutenants John A. Macready and Oak¬ 
ley G. Kelly, two United States Army flyers, 
had to try three times before they were able to 
cross the United States by airplane. 

“In which direction shall we travel the 
two asked an official of the Weather Bureau, 
when about to start off for the first time. 

“From West to East. The strongest winds 
follow that path/ 5 

The flyers decided to take this advice, al¬ 
though they knew that they might have trouble 
getting through the high mountain section of 
the west before the plane’s load of fuel should 
have been reduced. They would have to make 
their way through the mountain-passes, and if 
fog or clouds were present, this might be a very 
dangerous undertaking. 


112 


AIR TRAVELERS 


In the T-2, a Fokker monoplane with a Lib¬ 
erty motor, Macready and Kelly took off from 
San Diego, California. 

In spite of a heavy fog, the T-2 got through 
the first mountain-pass which was fifty miles 
away. By the time the second pass was reached, 
the fog was so dense the airmen could see only 
fifty feet ahead. 

It would have been unwise to try to get 
through the pass against such odds. The men 
turned around and returned to the flying field 
of San Diego. 

Once back, the men did not descend, but 
circled above the field. A note, which they 
dropped to their officer in command, explained 
what they were doing. To make up for having 
to give up the trip which they had planned, they 
were going to try to beat the world’s record for 
endurance flying. 

For thirty-five hours and eighteen minutes, 
Macready and Kelly remained aloft. They had 


ACROSS THE UNITED STATES 113 

earned the world’s best record, although they re¬ 
ceived no credit, since no one had observed or 
timed them throughout the entire period. 

Not long after, the two aviators started on 
their second trial flight across the United States. 
This time they flew out to sea several miles, in 
order to lighten their load and gain altitude. 
They were able to get beyond the mountains 
but were only four hundred miles out of San 
Diego, when a water-jacket around one cylinder 
was found to have cracked. A second one was 
seen to be leaking water, a few miles beyond 
Terre Haute, Indiana. 

With a very hot engine, the men were forced 
to descend at Indianapolis. 

“If we ever make another attempt to cross 
the United States, it will be by covered wagon,” 
one of the two said jokingly. 

After resting awhile, the flyers went on to 
Dayton, Ohio, where, at McCook Field, they 
succeeded in breaking the world’s record for 


AIR TRAVELERS 


114 

endurance flying by remaining aloft thirty-six 
hours, four minutes, and thirty-four seconds. 

This encouraged them to try once more to fly 
from coast to coast. 

“There are a few days of each year, about the 
last of April, when the prevailing winds blow 
from East to West,” the Weather Bureau had 
reported. 

“We shall try the East-West route and make 
use of these winds,” the flyers decided. 

From Roosevelt Field, in New York, the 
start was made on May, 2, 1923, at 12:36 p.m. 

As they went on their way, the flyers took 
turns piloting. While one sat in front at the 
controls, the other made repairs, looked after 
the gas and oil, or helped himself to sandwiches, 
broth, or coffee. 

Every six hours, the men changed places. 

As night came on, the flyers were over Day- 
ton, Ohio, well ahead of their scheduled time, 
but with a period of darkness ahead, and clouds 


ACROSS THE UNITED STATES 115 

gathering all around. After midnight, the plane 
came forth from the clouds, into bright moon¬ 
light. The men were able to see the fences used 
as section boundaries, on the ground below. 
Since these ran north and south or east and west, 
they were a help in pointing out directions. 

Over Kansas and Oklahoma, the tiny lights 
of towns and settlements, sprinkled here and 
there over the praries, were visible. 

At sunrise, the flyers found themselves at the 
very place they had wished to reach by early 
morning. It was Tucumcari, New Mexico, be¬ 
yond which came the rocky stretch of country 
so hard to cross. 

Even in daylight, and with a lightened load, 
there was some delay in crossing the mountains. 
West of St. John’s, Arizona, the T-2 could not 
make enough altitude to get over the peaks. 

For miles, Macready and Kelly flew in search 
of a pass, until what seemed to be a safe one 
opened before them. 


n6 AIR TRAVELERS 

But instead of leading into a cultivated val¬ 
ley, such as the men had hoped to find, the open¬ 
ing led only to a series of canyons. The flyers 
had all they could do to turn around in the 
narrow spaces without hitting the canyon wall. 

Out at last, the men found that they had lost 
their bearings, but flying west, by compass, 
brought them to Wickenburg, Arizona, where 
the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad guided them 
safely and surely. 

The Colorado River, Imperial Valley, and 
one last mountain range all had to be passed, 
but San Diego, the goal, was reached finally. 

Lieutenants Macready and Kelly had made 
the trip in twenty-six hours and fifty minutes. 
This was at an average of nearly one hundred 
miles an hour over the entire route. 

The men were about as tired as any two 
would be, after twenty-five hundred and six¬ 
teen miles of steady flying. As they flew low, in 
order to make a quick landing, they noticed 


ACROSS THE UNITED STATES 117 

that the roofs of the houses were crowded with 
people who had gathered to see the makers of 
the first non-stop flight across the United States. 

Telegrams of congratulation began to come 
in, soon after the arrival at the field. 

One came from the President, another from 
a ninety-two-year-old man in New York. It 
read : 

“Congratulations on your wonderful flying, 
which beats my time made seventy-one years 
ago, by ox-cart. At two miles an hour, I was five 
months on the way. Happy to see, in my ninety- 
third year, so great a transformation in methods 
of travel. Ready to go with you, next time.” 


KIDNAPED 


Besides the Los Angeles , the United States 
had one other dirigible balloon in 1924. This 
was the Shenandoah . 

The Shenandoah was resting at her one-hun- 
dred-and-fifty-foot mooring-mast, one day in 
January, when a storm came up suddenly. All 
the afternoon the wind blew a gale, and the rain 
came down in torrents. 

The Captain of the Shenandoah turned her 
around, so that her nose would face the gale, but 
from time to time the wind would give a great 
slap , that made the airship tremble from stem 
to stern. 

The Captain was alarmed. He feared that the 
great dirigible would be torn from her mast! 

The Captain was right. A strong gust of wind 

118 


KIDNAPED 


119 

came with force, and roared as it struck, as if to 
shout roughly, “Come along with meT 

The Shenandoah groaned and squeaked, but 
the wind would not give up. The airship was 
pulled from her mast and carried away by the 
storm! 

Mechanics who happened to be on board, 
started up five of the engines. Water-ballast 
was dropped. It was found to be quite useless 
to try to keep to a regular course, and the Cap¬ 
tain did not attempt it. For one reason, he did 
not know exactly where he was by the time the 
craft had been brought under some kind of con¬ 
trol. 

After a while, radio came to the rescue. Mes¬ 
sages were received and replies sent out. 

“All o.k. Thanks, old man , 55 came in to 
station WOR. of Newark, New Jersey. This 
was in reply to a message telling the Shenan¬ 
doah where she was at that time. 

“tell our folks not to worry. We are 


I 


120 AIR TRAVELERS 

comfortable,” brought relief to many who 
were wondering about the condition of the 
men in the craft. 

As the hours passed, the wind began to blow 
less fiercely, and the rain to fall more gently. 

Finally the storm blew over, and the Shenan¬ 
doah was able to make her way back to Lake- 
hurst. 

A great shout arose from the crowd of people 
that had gathered, as the dirigible slowly came 
down. “Goodness knows, I’m glad to be home 
again,” she seemed to say. 

Strangely enough, not one man had been 
hurt, and the airship had received no great in¬ 
jury. A piece of her nose had been torn when 
the wind had jerked her away, and this part of 
her battered nose still hung from the mooring- 
mast. 

Aside from this, the Shenandoah was as good 
as she had ever been. 



Photograph by Key done. 









A RACE WITH THE SUN 


Four enemy planes the American aviator, 
Lieutenant Russell L. Maughan, had brought 
down in the World War. With a speed of two 
hundred and six miles an hour, he had won the 
Pulitzer Race Trophy after the war. 

Lieutenant Maughan had had a showy career 
of flying, but when he announced that he would 
race the sun across the continent, he attracted 
more attention than ever. 

Macready and Kelly had made the crossing 
in a little over twenty-six hours. Lieutenant 
Maughan would have to make still better time 
to win his race. 

Like Macready and Kelly, Lieutenant 
Maughan had to make three trials. 

The first time, he was well under way when 
the gas-line clogged with dirt and his flight was 
ruined. 


121 


122 


AIR TRAVELERS 


The second time an oil-pipe sprang a leak. 

His third try came about a year after the 
Macready and Kelly flight. 

At four a.m. on June 23, 1924, in a new Cur¬ 
tiss pursuit plane, Lieutenant Maughan left 
Mitchell Field, New York. The sun was just 
beginning to show in the East, but the moon 
was shining overhead. There had been fog 
while the first two trials were made. This time, 
the weather was perfect. 

At Dayton, Ohio, the first stop, there was a 
delay of an hour for the repair of the starting- 
handle. At St. Joseph, Missouri, Lieutenant 
Maughan refreshed himself with cold chicken 
and a glass of milk. At North Platte, Nebraska, 
the weather was still good. In Cheyenne, Wy¬ 
oming, another stop, the sun continued to shine. 
At Salduro, Utah, there was a refueling and a 
rest of half an hour, but as the flyer hurried over 
Nevada, the sun was slowly sinking. 

There was no time to waste, then. Lieuten- 


A RACE WITH THE SUN 123 

ant Maughan raced along, and just as the last 
bit of the sun-ball was disappearing below the 
horizon, landed at Crissy Field, in San Fran¬ 
cisco. 

He had crossed the whole continent in one 
day between dawn and dusk. In seventeen hours 
and fifty-two minutes, at an average speed of 
one hundred and forty-two miles an hour, the 
twenty-five hundred and forty miles had been 
covered. 

In reply to the greeting of the Mayor of San 
Francisco, Lieutenant Maughan had a surprise 
ready. He handed the Mayor a copy of the New 
York Times issued on the morning of that same 
day! 


LIGHTING THE WAY 


A man stood on the railroad-station platform 
of a little town in Illinois. He was waiting 
for the next train, which was to take him to Chi¬ 
cago. Up the track he saw the headlight of the 
locomotive, which seemed to be two or three 
hundred yards away. 

The man started to get his hand-bags to¬ 
gether. 

“Plenty of time, sir,” announced the bag¬ 
gage-man, who happened to be passing. 

The traveler pointed up the track in the di¬ 
rection of the engine headlight. “The train is 
coming,” he said. 

“Ten or twelve miles away, sir. The track 
runs straight. That is why the lights show up so 
well.” 


124 


LIGHTING THE WAY 125 

The traveler was Colonel Henderson, Second 
Assistant Postmaster-General, later known as 
the “Father of the Air-Mail.” He had been 
given charge of the work of finding a lighting 
system that would help air-mail pilots in their 
night travel. 

All the way to Chicago, on this day, he kept 
thinking about how brightly the locomotive 
headlight had shone down the straight track. 

If a locomotive headlight can send its beam 
a distance of ten or twelve miles, surely a pow¬ 
erful beacon could be made to throw its light 
much farther, he decided. 

Colonel Henderson had already tried out 
some lights, but none had proven to be of great 
use. 

After seeing the locomotive headlight, he 
made up his mind that he would try a horizon¬ 
tal, instead of a vertical beam. Electrical en¬ 
gineers were called upon to experiment, and 
the problem was worked out. 


126 


AIR TRAVELERS 


Beacons of four hundred and fifty million 
candle power were made. Each could revolve 
three times a minute. Because of the revolu¬ 
tions, an airplane pilot coming from any direc¬ 
tion could get the ray of light on a straight line, 
and be guided by it from a great distance. 
Everything looked promising. 

The first beacon was set up at North Platte, 
Nebraska, and worked well from the very be¬ 
ginning. The beam could be seen almost one 
hundred and fifty miles, on clear nights. 

On the emergency landing-fields were placed 
smaller beacons of five million candle power, 
each beacon twenty-five miles from the next. 

Acetylene blinker lights were placed be¬ 
tween at distances of three miles. 

With the lighting problem worked out, cross¬ 
country air-mail delivery came quickly. 

On July 1, 1924, the service, much as we 
know it to-day, was begun. It had taken the 
train and plane service three and a half days to 


LIGHTING THE WAY 127 

carry mail from New York to San Francisco. 
With night and day flying, the regular time 
for coast to coast delivery, came to be thirty- 
three hours, or less than a day and a half! 


AROUND THE WORLD 


“Why not take a trip around the world by 
water*?’ 5 Away back in 1522, Magellan asked 
this question. Then he answered it by spending 
three years in girdling the globe, for the first 
time, by water. 

“Could a trip around the world be made by 
air 4 ?” After the World War this question was 
brought up. 

It was well known that there would be many 
dangers connected with such a journey—the 
Alaskan fogs, Chinese typhoons, Indian mon¬ 
soons, and the rigors of the North Atlantic win¬ 
ter. 

Aviators of France, Italy, Portugal, Britain 
and Argentina had failed in attempts to cir¬ 
cumnavigate the globe. Then United States 

airmen set out to make the flight. 

128 



AROUND THE WORLD 129 

The United States flyers chose a westward, 
rather than an eastward course. By travelling in 
this direction they hoped to avoid the terrific 
eastern storms, and to make the Atlantic cross¬ 
ing before winter. 

To take care of possible engine trouble, the 
route was divided into seven sections, each one 
containing a depot where supplies of all kinds 
might be obtained and repairs made. 

Four biplanes were fitted out for the expedi¬ 
tion, each one equipped with wheels and pon¬ 
toons for landing. The planes were named after 
four large cities in the north, south, east, and 
west of the United States, the Chicago , the 
New Orleans , the Boston , and the Seattle . Each 
was in charge of able men: Lieutenant Lowell 
H. Smith and Leslie P. Arnold on the Chicago , 
Lieutenants Wade and Henry H. Ogden on the 
Boston , Major Frederick J. Martin and Ser¬ 
geant Alva Harvey on the Seattle , and Lieuten¬ 
ants Erik H. Nelson and John Harding, Jr. on 

« 


AIR TRAVELERS 


130 

the New Orleans . In charge of the entire party 
was Major Frederick J. Martin. 

The planes left Seattle, Washington, on 
April 6th, to follow the western coast of Can¬ 
ada and Alaska. 

Almost from the very first, they had to plough 
through fogs, sleet, and snow. 

At Sitka, Alaska, there was a delay of four 
days because of stormy weather. 

On the way again, to Seward, one snowstorm 
after another made steering to a certain course 
almost impossible. Much of the time the pilots 
had to follow what they could see of the coast 
line, and take their chance of dashing into 
headlands. 

With new supplies, the expedition left Sew¬ 
ard and headed for Chignik, an Alaskan salmon 
cannery station. 

The Chicago , the New Orleans , and the Bos¬ 
ton reached their destination, but noticed that 
the Seattle was missing. Destroyers later found 


AROUND THE WORLD 131 

that the Seattle had been forced down by a 
broken crankcase, with the usual loss of oil that 
follows such a mishap. A new engine was or¬ 
dered later from the Dutch Harbor depot, on 
the Aleutian Islands, and the other three pilots 
were told to go on to that place to await the ar¬ 
rival of the Seattle. 

Major Martin, on the Seattle , started out 
again as soon as a new engine had been in¬ 
stalled. In the delay at Chignik three days 
because of poor flying weather, hundreds of 
pounds of spray gathered in a frozen coating 
on his plane, and had to be chopped off before 
she could rise at all. 

In the air again, the Major was anxious to 
make up for lost time, but a heavy storm 
blinded him and he lost his way. Against the 
side of a steep mountain his plane crashed and 
was wrecked beyond repair. 

For two days, the heavy fog kept Major Mar¬ 
tin and his companion prisoners in their broken 


AIR TRAVELERS 


132 

plane, with only a small amount of food on 
hand. 

The two started out as soon as they could 
make their way through the fog. In groping 
along, they almost walked off a fifteen-hun- 
dred-foot cliff. Then, for three days, they suf¬ 
fered from hunger, cold, snow-blindness, and 
loss of sleep as they slowly went about in search 
of shelter. Their lives were saved when they 
came upon an uninhabited cabin equipped with 
food, and containing a rifle. 

After waiting in the hut several days for a 
raging blizzard to spend itself, the two were 
able to make Port Moller, twenty-five miles 
away. 

The men in charge of the other three ships, 
in the meantime, had been ordered to go on their 
way, with Lieutenant Lowell H. Smith of the 
Chicago in command. 

Their route from the Aleutian Islands led 
across the Bering Sea to the Russian Island of 


AROUND THE WORLD 133 

Komandorski, then on to Kashiwabara Bay 
along the coast of Japan. 

Tokio and Shanghai came next, then Hong¬ 
kong, to reach which the edge of a typhoon had 
to be crossed. 

Farther on, in India, a newspaper reporter 
suddenly came forth from the baggage compart¬ 
ment of the Boston . At Calcutta, he had stowed 
himself away with his pad of paper, his pencil, 
and his toothbrush. 

The reporter was allowed to remain, but he 
was made to earn his way by helping with the 
gasoline and the oil drums. He turned out to be 
a very likeable fellow, and the men let him ride 
as cargo for a distance of three thousand miles, 
until he wished to alight at some point in Eu¬ 
rope. 

Travelling over Europe, the expedition 
reached England in safety. 

Not until after the departure from England, 
while the three airplanes were making their 


AIR TRAVELERS 


134 

way over the Atlantic Ocean, did any one of 
them have to be left behind. 

At the Orkney Islands, fog caused a delay, 
but as soon as possible, the airmen were on their 
way toward Iceland. 

Out only a few minutes, the planes ran into 
a fog bank, which caused the Boston and the 
Chicago to turn back. The New Orleans went 
right on, and reached her goal after a narrow 
escape from crashing in the fog. 

The Boston and the Chicago started out 
again when they learned by wireless that the 
New Orleans had won through. 

Near the Faroe Islands, the Boston was 
forced down when her oil-pump stopped work¬ 
ing. 

The Chicago circled around, but was waved 
away, as Lieutenant Wade of the Boston saw 
that the greatest service which the sister plane 
could give would be to summon help. 

A wireless call for aid was sent by the Boston 


AROUND THE WORLD 135 

to the United States cruiser Richmond , while 
the Chicago dropped a note on the Sudero Is¬ 
lands and another close to the United States 
destroyer Billingsby , before hurrying on her 
way to Iceland. 

Before either of the cruisers reached the Bos¬ 
ton , a trawler arrived at the scene of trouble, 
and tried to take the disabled airplane in tow 
as far as the Faroes. Because of the heavy seas, 
this could not be done. 

The Richmond came along, and tried to hoist 
the Boston to her decks. In making this attempt 
the tackle broke, and the Boston fell back 
heavily into the sea. 

Once more she was rescued and taken in tow, 
but sank later, when only a mile from land. 

By this time the Chicago had joined the New 
Orleans at the Iceland depot, and together, the 
two planes reached Greenland. 

Two hundred miles out of Labrador, the Chi¬ 
cago narrowly escaped having to drop out of 


AIR TRAVELERS 


136 

the expedition when her fuel-pumps both 
failed. By pumping for three hours with the 
hand-pump, Lieutenant Arnold was able to 
maintain a constant flow of fuel, so that the 
plane could push on her way. The Chicago was 
still one of the party. 

Lieutenant Wade and Sergeant Ogden of the 
Boston had been given a new airplane called 
the Boston II, in order that they might finish the 
voyage with the other flyers. 

From Nova Scotia, the three journeyed to¬ 
gether to the cities of Boston, New York, Wash¬ 
ington, Dayton, Chicago, Dallas, El Paso, and 
Los Angeles. 

On September 28 , 1924 , the three ships 
landed on the ground from which they had 
taken off on April 6th. The New Orleans had 
needed five engines to make the trip, the Chi - 
cago six, but twenty-seven thousand, five hun¬ 
dred and fifty-three miles had been covered, 
two thousand, six hundred and fifty-one miles 


AROUND THE WORLD 137 

more than the distance around the earth at the 
equator. 

To travel this distance, the planes had been 
on the way one hundred and seventy-five cal¬ 
endar days. Of this, fifteen days, eleven hours, 
and seven minutes was the flying time. 


THE LOS ANGELES 


One of the first dirigible balloons owned by 
the United States came from Germany. At the 
close of the World War, the Treaty of Ver¬ 
sailles had provided that such a craft be deliv¬ 
ered. 

In charge of Dr. Hugo Eckener, the President 
of the Zeppelin Company, the balloon left Ger¬ 
many on October 12,1924. If all went well, she 
was to be flown across the Atlantic Ocean and 
delivered to the United States Navy. 

As was the case with the R-34 , which had 
made the crossing a few years before, all did go 
well, although there were the usual dangers. 
Heavy fogs, storms, and winds were met on the 
way. A rip in a gas-cell which might have caused 
serious trouble was repaired successfully. At 
one time the craft was found to be off her course. 

i 3 8 


THE LOS ANGELES 


139 

The dirigible landed safely at Lakehurst, 
New Jersey, after having travelled five thou¬ 
sand and sixty-six miles in the longest non-stop 
flight that had yet been made, most of it over 
water. 

The new craft was given a rousing greeting 
with bells and whistles. 

She became the Los Angeles of the United 
States Navy. 


I 


THE SHENANDOAH DESTROYED 

In September, 1925, with Lieutenant-Com¬ 
mander Zachary Lansdown in charge, the Shen¬ 
andoah was ordered to visit the cities of Pitts¬ 
burgh, Columbus, Indianapolis, Kansas City, 
Des Moines, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. 
Paul, and Detroit. 

September is known to bring much bad 
weather in the Ohio State region. 

The Shenandoah had not been out long, 
when she had to battle with a terrific storm near 
Marietta, Ohio. Driven by a strong current, 
she was forced upward to a height of thirty-one 
hundred and fifty feet, within eight minutes. 
Six minutes later, she was caught by another 
gust, and dropped three thousand feet within 
three minutes. Almost at once, she was driven 


140 


SHENANDOAH DESTROYED 141 

upward again to a height of thirty-seven hun¬ 
dred feet. 

The Shenandoah was a strong craft, but the 
twisting currents of air that had come with the 
storm were too much for her. She was broken 
into three pieces, and of the crew of forty-two 
officers and men, only twenty-seven were saved. 
These men had remained in the forward section 
of the broken craft, in which they drifted about, 
as in a free balloon. Twelve miles away, a safe 
landing was made. 


FLIGHTS IN AFRICA 

It proved to be hard to travel by air from 
one end of Africa to the other. 

Two men left Cairo, Egypt, several years 
after the Armistice had been signed. For their 
plane they chose one of the Vickers-Vimy war¬ 
time bombers. In it, they planned to make the 
first journey by air, over the fifty-two hundred 
and six miles that lie between Cairo, in the 
north of Africa, and Cape Town in the south. 

Empty gas-tanks forced them to land just 
outside of Mongalla. The men were delayed in 
taking off, and had to sleep in their plane in 
order to keep out of the reach of crocodiles. 
Wild beasts howled about the plane, and in¬ 
sects gave their usual “biting” welcome. 

When the flyers were on their way again, and 
had travelled more than half the distance be- 


142 


FLIGHTS IN AFRICA 


143 

tween Cairo and Cape Town, radiator trouble 
and an overheated engine caused another forced 
landing. 

In coming down, the bomber struck a great 
ant-hill, and one of her wheels was torn off in 
such a way that the plane could no longer be 
used. 

A South African Dutchman was one of two 
men in charge of a second expedition from Cairo 
to Cape Town. Once again, the intense heat led 
to radiator trouble and a forced landing, in 
which the machine was wrecked. 

In a new plane, the men continued with their 
journey, and were able to complete it. But the 
really successful crossing of Africa, with one 
machine and the original engine, was made 
later by Alan J. Cobham of England, in 1926. 

In order to avoid the radiator troubles of pre¬ 
vious flyers, Cobham chose a radical air-cooled 
motor for his De Haviland plane. With a pho¬ 
tographer and a mechanic, he took off from 


AIR TRAVELERS 


144 

England, and reached Cairo without serious 
trouble. 

While making the crossing there were the 
usual high temperatures. At one time the ther¬ 
mometer registered 160° Fahrenheit near the 
ground, and 90° as high as seven thousand feet 
in the air. But the air-cooled motor which Cob- 
ham had chosen was able to work well in spite 
of the great heat, and the journey of eighty-five 
hundred miles from England to Cape Town 
was completed in safety, February 17, 1926, a 
truly great achievement. 

Much encouraged, Cobham decided to fly 
back again, and set out after a short delay. 

On the way back, Cobham and his men were 
amused at the sight of twenty lions making their 
way along slowly, in single file. The rain and 
heat were not so amusing, nor was the sand¬ 
storm that reached as high as twelve thousand 
feet. 

In spite of all the struggle, Cobham reached 


FLIGHTS IN AFRICA 145 

Cairo in nine and a half days, and London less 
than six days later. 

He was received by the King, to whom he 
gave a letter from the Governor-General of 
South Africa. It was the first letter that had 
ever been brought by air from the southern part 
of Africa to England. 


RICHARD BYRD FLIES TO THE 

NORTH POLE 

Several attempts to fly to the North Pole 
had ended in failure, when Richard Byrd 
started to make his preparations. 

A Swedish engineer named Andree, with two 
other brave aeronauts, had set out in a semi¬ 
dirigible balloon and had disappeared—never 
to be heard from again. 

Captain Amundsen and five companions 
were able to advance to a place a little more 
than one hundred miles from the Pole, in their 
two flying boats. After being forced down upon 
the cold Arctic waters, the men were rescued 
by a sailing ship. 

Amundsen thought that polar expeditions 
would have to be made in dirigible balloons, 
rather than in airplanes. Upon the return from 

146 



TO THE NORTH POLE 147 

his flight, he started at once to get ready for a 
trip over the Pole. 

Amundsen was busy with his preparations 
when Richard Byrd, of the United States Navy, 
entered the race. Byrd believed it possible to 
fly to the Pole in an airplane. He knew some¬ 
thing about Arctic air travel because, with Don¬ 
ald B. MacMillan, he had already explored un¬ 
discovered land near the Pole. 

Richard Byrd provided himself with a Fok- 
ker plane driven by three powerful motors. The 
plane was named the Josephine Ford , after the 
daughter of Mr. Edsel Ford, who was one of 
the backers of the flight. Byrd knew what perils 
would be on every hand should a landing have 
to be made in uninhabited regions, and he was 
prepared to make a fight for his life. Among the 
useful articles carried in the Josephine Ford 
were a short-wave radio with hand dynamo for 
sending, a good sled, and nourishing food like 
pemmican, chocolate, malted milk, sugar, 


148 AIR TRAVELERS 

cream, and cheese—enough to last over a period 
of two and a half months. A waterproof tent 
was also carried, as were hunting-knives, axes, 
a rubber boat, extra shoes and fur clothes, a 
pistol, a rifle, ammunition, a medical kit, a small 
gas stove, and smoke bombs. 

From the far northern King’s Bay, Spitz- 
bergen, the Josephine Ford took off, about 
thirty minutes after midnight on the morning 
of May 9, 1926, after several crashes in trying 
to take off from the ice and snow with her 
heavy load. 

Once in the air, she flew over open water 
along the coast of Spitzbergen for a distance of 
sixty miles. After this, the course was directly 
north, into what seemed to be an endless waste 
of ice and snow. In the bright sunlight, Richard 
Byrd and Floyd Bennett were able to get a won¬ 
derful view of the ice-pack, which reached 
nearly to Danes’ Island. Large fields of floating 
ice extended back a few miles before the solid 




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TO THE NORTH POLE 149 

pack was reached. The Polar sea, the men had 
thought, would be a mass of broken ice, but 
there were some fields of rather smooth ice. 
Great pressure ridges, from a few feet to fifty 
or sixty feet in height, ran in every direction, 
dividing the ice into patches that looked like 
a crazy-quilt from the air. The fields of 
smoother ice were between some of these 
ridges. 

Three open leads of water that looked like 
long, writhing snakes were seen. One of these 
was wide enough for the landing of a seaplane. 
The others were too narrow, about thirty or 
forty feet in width. 

Now and then, there would be a lead that 
had just frozen over a short time before. This 
fresh ice looked blue against the white of the 
snow. 

For six hours, everything went smoothly. 
While Floyd Bennett piloted the ship, Com¬ 
mander Byrd made use of his sextant to deter- 


AIR TRAVELERS 


150 

mine position, took the drift of the plane, 
checked the course with his sun compass, and 
took photographs and motion pictures. 

For about twenty minutes of every hour, 
Commander Byrd took his turn as pilot, while 
his companion checked up on the amount of gas¬ 
oline on hand and poured more gasoline into the 
tanks from the five-gallon cans, of which there 
were forty on the ship. 

When only about an hour’s run from the Pole, 
one of the motors was found to be leaking oil. 
Commander Byrd noticed the leak from his 
place in the cabin and took the controls, while 
his pilot went back into the cabin to see what 
he thought about the leak. 

Floyd Bennett reported that the leak looked 
bad, and there was no way of finding out just 
where it was, since the oil tank was well out 
of reach, and was covered with canvas and as¬ 
bestos besides. 


TO THE NORTH POLE 151 

“That motor will stop/’ Floyd Bennett 
wrote on his pad. 

It was decided to try running along for a 
short distance with the leaking motor throttled 
down, to see if it would be possible to keep the 
same altitude with only two motors running. 

This the men found they would be able to do, 
and they continued on their way with the leak¬ 
ing motor, although Floyd Bennett suggested 
that they make a landing to repair the leak. 

Commander Byrd remembered how Amund¬ 
sen had met with failure because of landing and 
being unable to rise again. There was so much 
chance of breaking the landing-gear, or of run¬ 
ning into some other trouble, that he held to 
his plan of keeping to the course and using the 
leaking motor as long as it might continue to 
run. 

The Josephine Ford roared on its way, and at 
9:04 o’clock on the morning of May 9th, Com- 


AIR TRAVELERS 


152 

mander Byrd knew from his instruments that 
he had reached the North Pole. 

There was no pole standing up, as some chil¬ 
dren might imagine. The North Pole was just 
a thick covering of ice in a lonely spot—a weird, 
mysterious place with no animal or vegetable 
life. 

Commander Byrd did not try to make a land¬ 
ing. He shook hands with his pilot, silently 
circled the Pole, took a few hasty photographs, 
and started on the return trip to King’s Bay. 

Things went well, and Commander Byrd was 
able to come within a mile of the part of the 
coast of Spitzbergen toward which he was di¬ 
recting his course. 

An hour of flying, and King’s Bay was 
reached in safety, sixteen hours after the take¬ 
off. 

The leaking motor, the men found, had lost 
only half its oil. The flyers could not under¬ 
stand this, at first. Later they found that the 


TO THE NORTH POLE 153 

leak had been caused by the loosening of a rivet, 
halfway down the tank. 

One of the first men to greet Commander 
Byrd was Amundsen, who was greatly disap¬ 
pointed because of having to be out of the Polar 
race, but filled with admiration for the success¬ 
ful flyers. 

Both of them he congratulated warmly, and 
kissed Commander Byrd upon both cheeks. 

In a very little while, radio had told the world 
of the great Polar victory. 


A DIRIGIBLE PASSES OVER 
THE POLE 


From Rome to Nome, Amundsen wanted to 
travel in his semi-rigid dirigible the Norge — 
named after his own country, Norway. 

With the Italian Colonel, I. N. G. Nobile, 
and a crew of seventeen, the Norge had left 
Rome, and was already in Spitzbergen when 
Commander Byrd and Floyd Bennett returned 
from their great flight. 

The day following the return of the Jose - 
phine Ford , the Norge left Spitzbergen and 
headed for Alaska, by way of the North Pole. 

The aircraft had been equipped with three 
motors, which could carry the ship along at 
sixty miles an hour, or more. The dirigible bal¬ 
loon was able to travel eight hours without re¬ 
fueling. 


154 


OVER THE POLE 


155 

Headwinds and fogs were met shortly after 
the take-off, but in spite of this, at three-thirty 
a.m., on May 12th, 1926, the Norge passed 
quietly over the North Pole, at an altitude of 
six hundred feet. 

Norwegian and Italian flags on stout, steel- 
pointed rods, were dropped, photographs were 
taken of the ice formations, and observations 
were made. A wireless message was also sent to 
the New York Times. This message appeared 
only a few hours later in the issue of May 12, 
1926, and was the first wireless message that 
had ever been sent from the North Pole. 

As she went on her way toward Nome, the 
Norge encountered snowstorms and fogs that 
checked her progress. Ice froze on her rigging, 
and her gas-bags were pierced by the sharp 
pieces of ice that were hurled from the revolv¬ 
ing propellers. 

At Teller, a place not far from Nome, one of 
the crew jumped to earth with a parachute, and 


156 AIR TRAVELERS 

secured the help of Eskimos of the town in mak¬ 
ing a landing. 

The great balloon had not reached the exact 
place for which she had set out, but in her 
thirty-four hundred miles of travel, she had 
proven that a dirigible balloon can be used in 
navigating polar regions. She had found, also, 
that there are no polar continents in the Arctic 


wastes. 





Courtesy of Aero Digest. 

The Josephine Ford ^nd the Norge. 
The first aircraft to fly over the North Pole. 



































. 













ALONE 

By a quarter of eight on the morning of May 
20, 1927, the Spirit of St. Louis had been made 
ready. 

Within its enclosed cabin, Charles Lindbergh 
was ready, too. 

“So long!” he cried to those who stood 
around, waiting to see the take-off. 

There was mud on the field. The airplane 
was heavily laden. It was hard for the Spirit of 
St. Louis to lift herself from the ground, but she 
rose slowly, and headed for the North and East. 
Little by little, she gained speed. Before long, 
she was nothing but a gray speck in the distance. 

Charles Lindbergh was off for Paris! And he 
was making the trip alone! 

The Atlantic Ocean had been crossed before. 
But no one had ever flown from New York as 


157 


158 AIR TRAVELERS 

far as Paris, and no one had ever crossed the At¬ 
lantic Ocean alone. 

“What if he should fall asleep 6 ?” people 
asked. 

“Sleet may gather on the wings of his plane, 
and weigh it down,” others predicted. 

“He has only one engine. If that gives out, 
what will he do 6 ?” was asked by others. 

“He may lose his way, and run out of gas,” 
was the fear of many. 

And all the time, the Spirit of St. Louis was 
pushing forward across the ocean. 

There were storms. High, low, the flyer had 
to make his way, in order to escape the blinding 
fog and the heavy sleet. A part of the way, he 
flew as high as two miles above the water. There 
were times when he kept within a few feet of the 
tossing waves. 

Once, when the sleet weighed heavily on the 
wings of his plane, the flyer thought of turning 
back. But he kept on. 


ALONE 


159 

“It might be as difficult behind as it is be¬ 
fore,” he decided wisely. 

There were cold and dampness all along the 
way, although a fur-lined flying suit helped to 
take care of this. 

The lone flyer had many miles to go, but he 
did not fall asleep, as some had feared he would 
do. Before starting the trip, he had practised 
staying awake for long hours at a stretch, and 
had become used to it. 

To help keep from losing the way, there 
were compasses and other instruments. Hour 
after hour he kept looking at these. He could 
finish the trip only with their help. 

A steady roaring showed that the engine of 
the Spirit of St. Louis was doing its part, too. 

After a night of fog, cold, sleet, and wind, 
morning came. The flyer knew, then, that his 
chances of reaching Paris were very good. 

Several fishing vessels came into view. Land 
could not be far away, then. 


AIR TRAVELERS 


160 

The flyer lowered his plane, until within 
calling distance. 

“Which way to Ireland?’ 5 he shouted to one 
of the fishermen. 

No answer. The man only waved his arms 
wildly. 

The lone flyer had to go on in the direction 
that seemed right to him. 

And it was right. A little farther ahead, land 
was seen. It was the coast of Ireland! 

The flyer did not stop there. It was not his 
goal. He went on and on, very fast, above neat¬ 
looking farms, towns, and villages, then over 
the waters of the English Channel. 

At last, the bright searchlight of the high 
tower of Paris came into view. The lights of 
Le Rourget were easily seen, but appeared to be 
very close to Paris. Lindbergh had understood 
that the field was farther from the city, and con¬ 
tinued to fly northeast for a distance of four 
or five miles. 



Colonel Lindbergh arrives at CuRTiss Field for the 

New York to Paris Hop. 





ALONE 


161 


When he found no other field, Lindbergh 
returned to the one that he had seen before, and 
spiralled down close to the lights. Because of 
the many cars and the long line of hangars, he 
knew that he had reached Le Bourget. He had 
reached the end of his journey of thirty-six hun¬ 
dred miles. Amid shouts of a great throng of 
people, a perfect landing was made at the Le 
Bourget airport. 

“Lindbergh has done it! He has made the 
first flight from New York to Paris! And he has 
made it alone!” The word had already been 
passed around. 

“Vive, Lindbergh!” The people crowded so 
closely that there seemed to be no use in trying 
to get away. 

Lindbergh was dragged out of the cockpit 
of his plane, and, for nearly half an hour, was 
carried around without being allowed to touch 
the ground. 

The French military flyers saw that a rescue 


i 62 


AIR TRAVELERS 


would have to be made. Quickly, at a given sig¬ 
nal, they placed Lindbergh’s helmet upon the 
head of an American correspondent. 

“This is Lindbergh!” they cried. 

The correspondent was really thought to be 
Lindbergh and was followed by a crowd to the 
Reception Committee, who had been waiting 
for some time. 

“I am Lindbergh,” the man said. Then the 
people followed him about. In this way the real 
Lindbergh was able to get away for his much- 
needed rest, for he had been in the air thirty- 
three hours and thirty-nine minutes. 

The next day began a round of attending 
dinners, receiving medals, riding in parades, 
and making speeches. Kings, queens, and great 
people everywhere took part in the greetings 
that were constantly given. 

As soon as he could, Charles Lindbergh re¬ 
turned to the United States, where the festiv¬ 
ities began all over again. 


ALONE 163 

The flyer could not be alone very much, for 
a while. 

Wherever he went, people followed. He had 
become a hero, and the whole world seemed 
anxious to honor him! 


CHAMBERLIN AND LEVINE 

“l shall keep on until my gas runs out.” 

This answer Colonel Clarence D. Chamber¬ 
lin gave, when asked where he was going in his 
Bellanca plane, the Columbia . 

Chamberlin was about to leave Roosevelt 
Field on the morning of June 4th, 1927, two 
weeks after Lindbergh’s flight to Paris, when 
Charles Levine, the owner of the Columbia , 
climbed into the cockpit. Only Chamberlin had 
known that Levine was to make the journey, 
and was to be the first transatlantic airplane 
passenger. 

There was ideal flying weather for a while, 
then headwinds and fogs. With the coming of 
darkness, great icebergs could be seen floating 
along on the dark surface of the North Atlantic. 
The icebergs looked like huge ghosts, but there 

164 


CHAMBERLIN AND LEVINE 165 

was something comforting about having them 
there. It would be possible to land upon one 
of them, if a forced landing had to be made. 

At midnight, there were fogs again, and blind 
flying. Once, when Chamberlin looked through 
an opening in the clouds, he saw a steamer pass¬ 
ing below. He signaled with his pocket flash¬ 
light, hoping that the radio operator would re¬ 
ply with a message which would reveal his 
position. But there was no answer. 

Shortly after the rising of the sun, another 
fog area gave the aviator a choice between fly¬ 
ing “blind” again, or trying to get to a clear 
space above the clouds. Chamberlin chose the 
latter, because in flying “blind,” the instru¬ 
ments are not always dependable. 

When the plane had reached her “ceiling,” 
or highest altitude, the fogs were still present. 

Down again, to a place only a few hundred 
feet from the waves, Chamberlin found a clear 
area, from which a passing tramp steamer could 


i66 


AIR TRAVELERS 


be seen. The crew of this ship waved their hand¬ 
kerchiefs but, strangely enough, did not send 
out a radio message about having seen the 
plane. Millions of people were waiting to hear 
such a message on that night, and would have 
been delighted to hear of the safety of the dar¬ 
ing flyers. 

At eleven-thirty on the morning of June 5th, 
the Columbia came within sight of the ocean 
liner Mauretania , three hundred and sixty 
miles west of the Scilly Islands. The Columbia 
flew low over the great ship. The passengers 
cheered and waved, while the radio operator 
sent out a message, telling that the Columbia 
was still making progress. 

Chamberlin, in the meanwhile, circled about 
while he got his bearings, then headed his plane 
in the direction from which the Mauretania had 
come. 

As the Mauretania steamed away over the 
western horizon, the two men in the Columbia 


CHAMBERLIN AND LEVINE 167 

could see, far to the south, the great gray body 
of the U.S.S. Memphis . She was carrying 
Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis 
back to the United States. 

Chamberlin headed eastward at terrific 
speed, and was soon over the green fields and 
well-kept farmlands of England. He knew that 
he could land on these in safety, but he had an¬ 
other night ahead, if he would go farther than 
Paris and better Lindbergh’s record. Chamber¬ 
lin had Berlin in mind, although he was not sure 
that he could reach it. 

Conditions looked favorable then, but 
trouble came soon after. 

Clouds and fogs soon shut off the view of 
land and water. To an altitude of twenty-one 
thousand feet the men had to climb. 

At this height, water from the mist collected 
on the wings, and froze. To make matters worse, 
the men did not know their exact location. 
They decided to zigzag around until the sun 


168 AIR TRAVELERS 

should rise. Then the frozen mists would melt 
from the wings of their plane, and besides, they 
would be able to see where they were. If they 
flew ahead, there was danger of striking the 
Hartz Mountains. 

Chamberlin decided to take a short time off 
for a snatch of sleep, while Levine took the 
controls. 

While Chamberlin dozed in the cabin, and 
Levine was left in charge, the plane suddenly 
went into a nose dive. 

Quick as a flash, Chamberlin awoke and 
grabbed the controls. Down three miles the 
plane fell before Chamberlin was able to right 
her again! It was a narrow escape from almost 
certain death! 

With the coming of daylight, the flyers 
could see that they were over German soil. 

As they approached the flying field of Dort¬ 
mund, Chamberlin flew low, and shouted to a 
group of Germans, “Nach Berlin (“To Ber- 


CHAMBERLIN AND LEVINE 169 

lin?”), then flew in the direction pointed out 
in answer to his question. 

As the flyers neared the Hartz Mountains, 
for the first time since leaving the United States 
the motor began to sputter. 

At once Chamberlin prepared to land, and 
in a very short time had brought the Columbia 
down upon a wheat field. From people who 
arrived at the scene, he learned that he was near 
the small town of Mansfeldt, not far from 
Eisleben. 

Once more the flyers asked for directions to 
Berlin, and with fresh gasoline, were ready 
to go on again. 

This time, Chamberlin lost his way in the 
darkness, and found himself over the flying 
field of Cottbus, seventy miles southeast of 
Berlin, where motor trouble forced him down 
again. 

The landing was made on marshy ground, 
and one of the propeller blades was broken. 


AIR TRAVELERS 


170 

The flyers had to delay their journey until 
a new propeller could be secured, but on June 
7th, 1927, at Tempelhofer Field, outside of 
Berlin, the Columbia landed before a crowd of 
one hundred and fifty thousand people. 

Although the men had not flown direct to 
Berlin, which they had had in mind for a land¬ 
ing-place, Chamberlin and Levine were happy 
to know that they had arrived safely on German 
soil. 

And in forty-two hours and forty-five min¬ 
utes, they had made a new long-distance record 
for their non-stop flight of three thousand, nine 
hundred and eleven miles. 


THE GOOD-WILL MESSENGER 


“We should like to have you visit Mexico 
City/’ 

The President of Mexico sent this message 
to Charles Lindbergh, not long after the great 
flight from New York to Paris. 

Charles Lindbergh decided to accept the in¬ 
vitation. He planned to visit other countries 
south of the United States. 

“It might be well to extend to them the good¬ 
will and the greetings of the United States,” 
he suggested. 

The trip south was not an easy one. To reach 
Mexico City, the plane had to be driven through 
heavy fogs, strong headwinds, and breezes. 

“Lindbergh Lost”, American newspapers 
had for a headline at one time. It seemed that 


AIR TRAVELERS 


172 

the messages of good-will might never be de¬ 
livered at all. 

Fortunately, after flying about for a while, 
Charles Lindbergh found his way at last, and 
reached Mexico City in safety. 

At this first landing-place, Charles Lind¬ 
bergh took the President of Mexico for his first 
ride in an airplane. At this place, also, Charles 
Lindbergh saw his first bullfight. For the first 
time, the flyer met the young woman whom he 
was to marry. He also delivered his greetings 
and first message of good-will. It seemed to 
be a first time in more ways than one for the 
gallant aviator and for others. 

After leaving Mexico City, there were rug¬ 
ged mountains, steaming volcanoes, and 
thickly grown jungles. In some places, the na¬ 
tives rushed out of their little thatch-roofed 
huts when they heard the roaring of the motor. 
The natives had never seen an airplane before. 
No one knows just what they might have done 


mtmtm 



Photograph by Keystone. 

The American Clipper. 

Col. Lindberg piloted this amphibian on its maiden flight from North America 
to South America, initiating the regular passenger service 
between Miami and Cristobal. 












THE GOOD-WILL MESSENGER 173 

to Charles Lindbergh or his plane, if there had 
been a forced landing in their midst. 

Charles Lindbergh flew over many hundreds 
of miles of country. Sometimes he flew high. At 
other times he took his plane so close to the 
ground that he could see plainly the mango and 
the palm trees, great plantations of coffee, and 
birds of gay plumage. 

Great crowds of people were gathered at 
each landing-place. On one field, so many had 
assembled that the messenger had to drop a note 
asking that the police clear the field, before a 
landing could be made. 

Over the Panama Canal, Lindbergh flew, too. 
At this place he must have thought of the time, 
a number of years before, when his father took 
him to see the great canal while it was being 
built. The little boy had not known that a few 
years later he would be flying over the same 
place in an airplane. 

In all, Charles Lindbergh visited twelve 


AIR TRAVELERS 


174 

countries besides Mexico, and talked with peo¬ 
ple of all sorts, from presidents to humble na¬ 
tives. 

Everywhere, the coming of the messenger 
caused people to think more about flying. Some 
of them wondered that, in a few hours, Charles 
Lindbergh could travel over the wild part of 
a country that they had to take days to cross, 
with their slow ways of travel. 

And everywhere, Charles Lindbergh deliv¬ 
ered his message from the United States. 

“I come to bring greetings/' In all countries 
the message was delivered. 

No one had ever visited so many strange 
lands in this way before. It seemed that every 
one felt more friendly toward the United 
States, because of the good-will messenger . 


PACIFIC OCEAN FLIGHTS 


Out of gas! The Navy flyers who first tried 
to cross the Pacific Ocean in 1925 had this 
trouble, and, although they were eighteen hun¬ 
dred and seventy miles out of San Francisco, 
there were still many miles to go. 

The flyers gently lowered their seaplane un¬ 
til it rested upon the ocean, then began at once 
to look around for help. 

On the second day adrift, a ship came into 
sight. It passed at a distance of a mile, but no 
one on board noticed the seaplane. 

With their radio, the flyers could receive mes¬ 
sages but could send out none. They could hear 
the searchers tell what they were doing, and 
knew from what they said that help was very 
far away. 

As the days passed, food became mouldy 
and drinking water very scarce. Rain that col- 


175 


176 AIR TRAVELERS 

lected in the hollows of the sails, the men drank, 
at times. 

These sails were made from the lower wing- 

fabrics, and helped the seaplane to move along 

at a speed of fifty miles a day. Four hundred 

and fifty miles had been covered in this way, 

and the men were nine davs out of San Fran- 

* 

cisco, when they were discovered by a sub¬ 
marine. Distress signals, which the flyers had 
made by burning pieces of wing-fabric in a 
bucket, had been seen by the submarine crew. 

Fresh water and food were given the flyers, 
and the seaplane was towed by the submarine 
to the harbor of the nearest Hawaiian Island. 
There a power boat came along and took the 
towing-line and helped them to anchor. 

As for the weary travelers—their faces were 
browned from the hot rays of the tropical sun. 
Each man had a heavy growth of beard. They 
had been unable to make the first flight to the 
Hawaiian Islands without stopping, but they 



PACIFIC OCEAN FLIGHTS 177 

had had a boat ride that they would not forget 
very soon. 

Two years later, several Army flyers made the 
first non-stop crossing of the Pacific, from the 
United States to the Hawaiian Islands, in their 
large tri-motor Fokker monoplane. 

They were Lieutenants Lester J. Maitland 
and Albert F. Hegenberger. 

On June 28 th they left Oakland, California. 
In twenty-five hours and fifty minutes they 
were at Wheeler Field, Honolulu, twenty-four 
hundred miles away. 

Only very skillful aviators could have made 
this Pacific crossing. A mistake of just two de¬ 
grees, and they would have missed their goal. 
In the Pacific Ocean there is no other body of 
land until one reaches the Solomon Islands, 
twenty-five hundred miles farther away. 

It was a genuine flight. It was the longest 
non-stop over-sea flight that had been made 
by an airplane. 


I 


A COSTLY RACE 

First prize, twenty-five thousand dollars! 

Second prize, ten thousand dollars! 

These were the amounts offered for the fast¬ 
est crossing of the Pacific Ocean, in what was 
known as the Dole race, which took place about 
two months after Maitland and Hegenberger 
had made the first non-stop crossing of the Pa¬ 
cific. 

There were fourteen entrants, but only eight 
of these crossed the starting line. Of the eight, 
four had to turn back because of fog. The other 
four raced ahead at topmost speed. 

Art Goebel and William Davis, in their 
Woolaroc , reached Honolulu after twenty-six 
hours and seventeen minutes in the air. Two 
of the contesting planes were lost at sea. One of 

178 


A COSTLY RACE 


179 

them carried a woman—a school-teacher named 
Mildred Doran. In all, ten lives were lost. 

There was not much interest in events of this 
kind after the sad ending to the Dole Race. 
“Too costly,” people said. 


THE WILKINS FLIGHT 

Amundsen and his crew of men had already 
flown from Spitzbergen to Point Barrow, 
Alaska, and then on to their landing-place not 
far from Nome. 

An Australian, Captain George H. Wilkins, 
and a Norwegian, Lieutenant Carl B. Eilson, 
planned next a flight in the opposite direction, 
from Point Barrow to Spitzbergen. 

Thirty-three Eskimos had to shovel in the 
snow for two days, in order to make a runway 
for the take-off. The plane had been equipped 
with skis, but refused to rise, time and time 
again. And with each failure it had to be hauled 
back again to the starting point. 

In the air at last, on April 15, 1928, the Lock¬ 
heed Vega tri-motored monoplane followed a 

180 


THE WILKINS FLIGHT 181 

route over a wide polar sea, which carried her 
two hundred miles south of the Pole. 

Twenty-five miles from Spitzbergen, at a 
place called Dead Man’s Island, the flyers were 
forced down by a terrific storm, and were de¬ 
layed for five days by drifts of snow four feet 
high, over the runners of the plane. 

When an attempt could be made to take off 
again, Wilkins had to help the engine by get¬ 
ting out and pushing on the tail of the plane. 
The plane took off, but, unfortunately, Wil¬ 
kins had slipped off the icy fusilage and was 
left behind. 

Eilson had to bring the plane down to earth, 
after which Wilkins repeated his pushing job. 
A second time he slipped, and the plane rose 
without him. Again Eilson had to make a land¬ 
ing. 

Finally the pushing of the plane succeeded, 
and the men were able to continue on their 
way. 


AIR TRAVELERS 


182 

When Captain Wilkins and Lieutenant Eil- 
son reached Green Harbor, Spitzbergen, they 
had been in the air twenty and one-half hours, 
and had flown twenty-two hundred miles. 

Later in the same year, on December 27th, 
the Australian and Norwegian airmen made 
the first flight over Antarctica. 


A SAD STORY OF THE NORTH 


Umberto Nobile had flown from Rome to 
Nome with Amundsen, across the North Pole. 
But he wanted to take charge of a polar flight 
of his own. 

By easy stages he flew from Milan to King’s 
Bay, Spitzbergen, in a dirigible balloon which 
had been named the Italia . From this point, on 
May 23, 1928, he took off for the North Pole. 

“We have reached our goal,” a wireless mes¬ 
sage reported on the day following. 

“All is well. We are returning home,” came 
on the 25th of May. 

Then — a violent storm — and no word. 

For a long time it was not known what had 
happened. Then, from a place two hundred 
and twenty miles from her base, came an S.O.S. 
call from the Italia . Ice had formed on the bag 

183 


AIR TRAVELERS 


184 

of the great dirigible. As she crashed upon 
the frozen polar sea, ten of her men were 
thrown out, one of them killed. Six more were 
still aboard, as the Italia drifted away again to 
the East. 

At once, rescue parties began to gather at 
Spitzbergen, by ship, dog team, and airplane. 
During the next few months, numbers of men 
risked their lives trying to aid the survivors of 
the unfortunate expedition. Famous men 
joined in the search, and five nations took part 
in it. 

In June, at a place about two hundred miles 
from King’s Bay, an Italian Major espied a 
tent which had evidently been dyed red to at¬ 
tract attention. By parachute, the Italian Ma¬ 
jor dropped 650 pounds of food. Since the ice 
was breaking up about that time, he was unable 
to land his plane, but returned again and 
dropped more food, clothing, and tobacco. 

A few days later, a very skillful Swedish avi- 


SAD STORY OF THE NORTH 185 

ator managed to land on the treacherous ice. 
As he had suspected, the men he had seen from 
above were survivors of the Nobile expedition. 
Nobile himself was there, with his chief engi¬ 
neer and four others. The navigator, the pilot, 
and one other had set off on foot in an attempt 
to reach the mainland. 

The Swedish aviator took Nobile to Whale 
Island, Hinlopen Strait. He returned, after a 
while, for another man, but crashed in trying 
to make a landing, and he, himself, was a pri¬ 
soner on the frozen sea. 

Meanwhile, other rescuers were at work. 
Amundsen, who had sailed with Nobile on the 
Rome to Nome flight, was himself lost in try¬ 
ing to rescue some of the Nobile party. In all, 
twenty-four planes took part in the exciting 
hunt for stranded members of the ill-fated ex¬ 
pedition. 

In July, a Russian ice-breaking ship found 
the two men who had been the pilot and naviga- 


186 AIR TRAVELERS 

tor. They had been on the ice forty-three days, 
and for thirteen days had had no food. 

As for the men who had been carried away in 
the Italia after the crash, nothing w T as heard 
from them. 

In all, twelve members of the Nobile party 
perished. 

The Expedition had turned out to be the 
most disastrous of all the polar flights. 


THE SOUTHERN CROSS 


After the Pacific Ocean had been crossed by 
air as far as the Hawaiian Islands, men wanted 
to go farther. 

Australia, more than seven thousand miles 
away,became the goal of four daring men. Two 
Australians, Captain Charles Kingsford-Smith 
and Captain Charles Ulm were pilots. Two 
men from the United States, Harry W. Lyon 
and James Warner, were the navigator and the 
radio operator respectively. 

The men planned their trip slowly and care¬ 
fully. Then, in their tri-motored Fokker plane 
called the Southern Cross , they left Oakland, 
California, on May 31, 1928. 

Honolulu, the first stop, was reached in 
safety. 

The next stop was to be Suva, Fiji Islands, 

187 


188 AIR TRAVELERS 

three thousand one hundred and thirty-eight 
miles away. 

Favorable weather helped the men along the 
first half of this hop. Rain storms, head winds, 
and bumpy air made the night a very hard one 
for the flyers, but the second hop ended with a 
successful landing. 

The third and also final landing-place was 
reached only after a fight with violent storms 
all the way. 

But in Sydney, Australia, on the 9th of June, 
the men arrived safely. 

Another record-breaking flight had been 
made. 


THE BREMEN 

Three airplanes had been lost in trying to 
cross the Atlantic Ocean from East to West, 
when the Bremen was fitted out for this same 

flight. 

Two Germans and an Irishman were to be 
in charge of the fourth attempt to fly over the 
Atlantic in this direction. The men were Cap¬ 
tain Hermann Koehl, Baron Gunther von 
Hunefeld, and Commandant James Fitzmau- 
rice. 

The Bremen was a Junkers monoplane, 
which had been constructed with the greatest 
care. In a plane of duralumin, which is as 
durable as steel, and as strong and as light as 
aluminum, the men believed that their lives 
were perfectly safe. 

“No radio, life preservers, or boat; no emer- 

189 


190 AIR TRAVELERS 

gency dump-valve , 55 they said. “We shall not 
need them. By going without them, we shall 
have room for more gas . 55 

The Bremen left Baldonnel Airport, the 
military flying field on the outskirts of Dublin, 
on June 12, 1928. The ship flew two flags, — 
the black, red, and white of Germany, and the 
green, white, and gold of the Irish Free State. 

In the sunshine, above a calm sea, the men 
flew during the first day out. 

With the darkness came strong head winds, 
followed by a terrific blizzard. Thick layers of 
ice formed on the wings of the plane. Like a 
helpless kite, the Bremen was tossed about, out 
of one storm into another. Failure of the plane’s 
lighting system did not give much encourage¬ 
ment. 

While one of the flyers worked in great haste 
to repair the electric lights, the instrument 
board was in darkness, although a pocket flash¬ 
light helped a little. 



Photograph by Keystone. 













THE BREMEN 191 

While the men were flying “blind” in the 
darkness, they were drifting out of their course. 
When the lights were repaired at last, it was 
found that they had flown northward four hun¬ 
dred miles! 

With the coming of daylight, the aviators 
checked on their position again, and found that 
they were very far from their course. They flew 
westward, only to find themselves in the midst 
of fog and storm areas. 

By this time their gasoline was getting very 
low, and the men knew that they would never 
be able to reach their goal of Mitchell Field, 
New York. What they hoped to do was to land 
in civilized territory, where they could refuel 
and go on again. 

From a sea of fog, through a break in the 
clouds, the flyers saw a lighthouse located on 
an island. They chose the middle of a reservoir 
for landing, and swooped down. 

As the plane landed, the ice gave way, and 


AIR TRAVELERS 


192 

the ship nosed over. This left her with a broken 
chassis and a bent propeller. It was her worst 
mishap, after thirty-four hours spent in cross¬ 
ing two thousand miles of water. 

The men were nearly exhausted, but were 
greeted warmly by the keeper of the island and 
some fishermen, while a lunch of crackers and 
milk was provided. The flyers were told that 
they were on Greenley Island, Straits of Belle 
Isle. Only seven families were living on the 
desolate island, but the men were made to feel 
at home. 

Meanwhile, the lighthouse keeper sent word 
of the landing to the Point Amour wireless sta¬ 
tion, across the Straits, on the mainland. 

Just three days later, rescue planes appeared, 
to the great relief of the stranded men. 

The Bremen s engine was found to have suf¬ 
fered from exposure, and since, besides, there 
was no space for a good take-off on wheels, it 
was decided that the crew should fly to New 


THE BREMEN 


193 

York in the Ford relief plane which had been 
sent for them. 

In New York, the usual hearty reception was 
given. Many were thrilled because of the dar¬ 
ing flight. Still others rejoiced because the trip 
had been made by men whose countries had 
been at war a few years before. 

“With the end of the war, peace between na¬ 
tions has really come again,” was the thought 
expressed by many. 

The Bremen to-day hangs in the Grand Cen¬ 
tral Station in New York City. It was the first 
plane to make the non-stop, westward hop 
across the Atlantic! 


THE FIRST WOMAN TO FLY 
THE ATLANTIC 

Amelia Earhart knew how to fly an air¬ 
plane, but for a while she spent much of her 
time helping to take care of poor children in 
Boston. 

One day, while at work with some of the chil¬ 
dren, the telephone rang. 

Miss Earhart quieted every one, and stepped 
to the telephone. 

“Would you like to take a dangerous trip in 
the air?” was the question which came over the 
wire. 

“A dangerous trip in the air!” Amelia Ear¬ 
hart had already taken a few of these. What 
could the strange person have in mind? And 
who was calling? She would have to find out 


194 


AMELIA EARHART 


195 

all about this, before an answer could be 
given. 

“I will meet you later in the day, when I am 
through teaching,” Amelia Earhart replied. 

At the meeting, Miss Earhart found out that 
the stranger was a skilled flyer, who was about 
to try to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. 

“Would you like to be a passenger in the air¬ 
plane?” he asked. 

Amelia Earhart could fly well, herself, and 
she loved to travel about in an airplane. It 
would be a great adventure to try to cross the 
Atlantic Ocean! No woman had ever done this 
before! Several had lost their lives in trying 
to do so. 

“A ship with a woman ain’t got no luck,” 
sailors had said. 

It did not take long for Amelia Earhart to de¬ 
cide what to do. She would go! 

Not long after, on June 17, 1928, in a tri- 
motored Fokker monoplane called the Friend - 


AIR TRAVELERS 


196 

ship , two men and a woman were on their way 
across the Atlantic Ocean. The men were the 
pilot, Wilmer Stultz, and a mechanic Louis 
Gordon. The three used a seaplane that had two 
pontoons upon which the plane could rest, 
should a landing have to be made in the water. 

The woman passenger, Amelia Earhart, sat 
upon a pile of clothing, because there were no 
other seats, and not even real cushions had been 
taken along, because of lack of room. She kept 
looking about, and writing in a diary a part of 
what she saw. 

Over Newfoundland, the outlines of lakes 
amused her. Some looked like huge footprints, 
others like great buffaloes, while a few had the 
forms of strange animals that lived many years 
ago. 

The Atlantic Ocean is a great place for 
storms. The Friendship ran into the worst one 
that Amelia Earhart had ever met in all her fly- 
ing! 


AMELIA EARHART 


197 

When there were no storms, it seemed that 
fogs were doing what they could to hinder the 
travelers. Sometimes the flyers rose up above 
these, and the fluffy tops of the fog could be 
seen below. At other times, wisps of cloud 
floated past the cabin windows. 

When the sea was not hidden, it seemed to be 
wrinkled like the back of an elephant, Amelia 
Earhart wrote in her diary. 

Most of the time the fogs were so thick that 
the ocean was completely hidden! Instead of 
looking out upon a sea of water there was only 
a sea of fog! 

The pilot had to guide the airplane with only 
his instruments to aid him. Much of the time he 
could see neither sky nor water — nothing but 
mists and clouds. 

Three oranges and a dozen malted milk 
tablets made up the only food Amelia Earhart 
had during the entire trip, although there were 
three huge sandwiches, coffee, pemmican, oat- 


198 AIR TRAVELERS 

meal cookies, and chocolate bars from which to 
choose. 

A part of the time Miss Earhart had to write 
in the dark, because she did not want to turn on 
the electric light in the cabin, for fear of blind¬ 
ing the man at the controls. She used the thumb 
of her left hand to help keep the place. The 
trouble was in knowing where to begin a new 
line. Even with the help of the left thumb, two 
lines often piled up, one on the other, in an ex¬ 
asperating manner. 

Amelia Earhart had strange sights to record 
in her diary, and beautiful scenes as well. 

At times, the sun shone through rifts in the 
fog, with a warm pink glow. In the early morn¬ 
ing, the patches of fog looked like dragons, 
sea serpents, and teddy-bears. A strange view 
this was, until melted away by the warmth of 
the sun. 

When the Friendship had been in the air 
nineteen hours, it was found that there was left 


AMELIA EARHART 


199 

only enough gasoline for an hour’s flying. The 
fog was still around, and the radio dead. 

The pilot had a serious look. He hardly knew 
what move to make. Nor did the mechanic. 
They just kept on flying in what seemed to be 
the direction in which they had been going. 

After a while they flew low, not far above the 
ocean. They were surprised to see a great steam¬ 
ship coming along. It was the America , they 
found later. 

The pilot of the Friendship scribbled a note, 
in which he asked about the location of his ship. 
To the note Amelia Earhart tied an orange, for 
a weight. The Friendship circled around above 
the America , and the orange was dropped. 

It happened that the wind was blowing hard. 
The Friendship was travelling fast. The 
steamship was also making good time. Because 
of this, it was hard to make the orange land 
upon the boat. Two notes were lost before the 
flyers decided that they would have to go on 


200 


AIR TRAVELERS 


their way, and try to reach land somewhere 
without help. 

All were in danger. Each of the three knew 
this well enough. 

Without thinking what he was doing, the 
mechanic helped himself to a large egg sand¬ 
wich, and began to eat it slowly. Perhaps it 
helped him to think better. He said later that he 
did not know, himself, just why he should have 
tried to eat a sandwich at such a dangerous 
time. 

When the gasoline was nearly gone, and all 
were about to give up hope, the mechanic sud¬ 
denly gave a shout, and threw what was left of 
his sandwich out of the airplane window, as far 
as he could throw it! 

“Land!” he shouted. “Hooray!” 

The three looked ahead. A dull bluish out¬ 
line could be seen in the distance. 

“Yes, it was land!” 

A little later, fishing vessels appeared on the 


AMELIA EARHART 


201 


waters of the ocean below. This was a sure sign 
that land was near! 

The three were very eager then! 

And when they landed at Burry Point, Car¬ 
marthenshire, Wales, a little later, it seemed 
that one of the happiest days of their lives had 
come. They had not reached the exact place for 
which they had set out, but they were all safe, 
and they had crossed the Atlantic Ocean! 

As they stepped ashore, a crowd surrounded 
them with greetings and praises. 

Every one seemed eager to welcome the two 
men and, especially, the first woman to cross the 
Atlantic Ocean by air. 


FIGHTING FOR ALTITUDE 

Like all men who try to fly to great heights, 
Lieutenant Apollo Soucek, the United States 
Navy flyer, had to fight for the altitude record 
which he made on May 8, 1929. 

When four miles up, he began to feel the 
very cold air around his eyes. He had taken off 
his goggles in order to get a better view of the 
country which lay beneath him, and the hori¬ 
zon, fifty miles away. 

As the plane climbed higher, the cold became 
more biting. Lieutenant Soucek had to put on 
his goggles, to keep his eyelids and eyes from 
freezing. 

Five or six miles up, there was a temperature 
of sixty-five degrees below zero. Since it has 
been known that it is cold at high altitudes, 


202 


FIGHTING FOR ALTITUDE 203 

the Navy flyer had on the warmest kind of 
clothing. Heavy woolen underwear, a thickly 
padded suit of leather, fur-lined gloves, and 
fleecy moccasins he wore. A fur helmet came 
down over his face. 

The cold was not the only enemy to fight. 
When only a few miles up, the air begins to lose 
some of its oxygen. Thin air makes a person 
weak and very tired, as would loss of sleep for 
a number of days. A flyer would become dizzy, 
senseless, and perhaps would die, were it not 
for the oxygen which he carries with him in 
tanks. 

Lieutenant Soucek began to take some of this 
oxygen when only twelve thousand feet up. 
This he had been advised to do, to save his 
strength for the hardest part of the flight in the 
higher altitude. 

At a height of a little over seven miles, the 
hardest part of the flight began. The light oil 
which helps to make the controls easy to move 


AIR TRAVELERS 


204 

had frozen. And it was hard to make the plane 
do any climbing, she was so near her limit. 

Thirty-eight thousand feet, and it seemed 
that the plane could go no higher! 

At this altitude the air is very light , too. Up 
high, the air presses against a person more 
lightly than down near the surface of the earth. 
A balloon will burst after it has reached a cer¬ 
tain height, because the gas within presses more 
strongly than the rarer air on the outside. A 
person will not burst like a balloon, but he will 
feel very weak and uncomfortable. 

Because of the cold, frost began to form on 
the inside of the flyer’s goggles. They became so 
thickly coated that the Lieutenant had to look 
through the six tiny holes which had been bored 
through the glass of the goggles, in order to 
direct the movements of his plane as best he 
might. 

It was hard to see the instruments clearly, and 
Lieutenant Soucek pushed his goggles up on his 


FIGHTING FOR ALTITUDE 205 

forehead, but not for long. His eyes began to 
freeze, and became very painful. 

For a while, Lieutenant Soucek had to fly 
with his knees controlling the stick. With his 
left hand he managed the supercharger which 
kept his engine at work in air that was so differ¬ 
ent from that to be found at the surface of the 
earth. With his right hand he removed his gog¬ 
gles now and then, and held them in such a way 
as to break the wind, while he took a good view 
of instruments and controls. 

The Lieutenant began to feel very tired, and 
took as much oxygen as he could, in order to 
keep from fainting. The light air of the high 
altitudes was making him weak. 

At thirty-nine thousand feet, the plane 
climbed so very slowly that the Lieutenant 
thought that the altimeter must surely be 
frozen. 

The Lieutenant took a peek at the ground 
below. He could see the bend of the Potomac 


206 


AIR TRAVELERS 


River at Washington. Except for the fine 
straight lines of the streets, the city of Wash¬ 
ington was just a blur on the ground. The 
country around was like a patchwork quilt, with 
small tears made by the rivers. 

The Lieutenant thought the view a beautiful 
and interesting one, but he had no time to en¬ 
joy it at length. 

“Up- -I must try to go still higher,” he 
thought. 

As before, the plane wavered, as if it could 
not ascend. 

The flyer tried to force her. Upward he 
pointed her nose, and then—downward fell 
the plane in a spin! He had tried to make her 
go beyond her ceiling! The climb was over! 

At two thousand feet farther down, the 
Lieutenant was able to get his plane out of the 
spin. In great circles he spiraled slowly to his 
home field at the Naval Air Station. 

His ears were aching from the greater pres- 




FIGHTING FOR ALTITUDE 207 

sure down below. Aside from this, he felt very 
well. 

His records showed that he had flown higher 
than the tallest mountain in the world. He 
had reached an altitude of thirty-nine thou¬ 
sand, one hundred and forty feet, or almost 
eight miles! 

At Anacostia, Washington, D. C., on June 4, 
1930, Lieutenant Soucek again fought his way 
to the upper spaces. 

This time he reached a height of forty-three 
thousand one hundred and sixty-six feet, and 
won for himself both the American and the 
World airplane altitude records. 


A ROUND-TRIP FLIGHT 


Frank Hawks already held the record for 
fast non-stop flying across the United States, 
when he started on his round-trip flight, in 1929. 
He had flown from Los Angeles to New York in 
eighteen hours and eighteen minutes, in Feb¬ 
ruary of the same year. And the record had been 
made in spite of unusually bad flying weather. 
Almost the entire distance, he had flown at ten 
thousand feet or higher, in order to keep above 
the storms. 

He started on his round trip, from New 
York to Los Angeles and return, on June 28th. 
This time there was good flying weather dur¬ 
ing the westward part of the flight, except for 
rain storms in parts of the Middle West. 

Hawks reached Los Angeles at eight o’clock 
in the evening of the same day on which he had 

208 


A ROUND-TRIP FLIGHT 209 

left New York. He had planned to set out 
again for New York at about midnight, but 
a leaking carburetor had to be replaced by a 
new one. 

Delayed in this way, it was three-thirty in 
the early morning of June 29th before he was 
able to take off again. 

The hardest parts of the return trip were the 
very beginning and the ending. At Los Angeles, 
a heavy fog made a low ceiling of only six 
hundred feet. Telegraph reports from the 
weather observation office at Mt. Lowe brought 
word that the blanket of mist reached as high 
as three thousand feet. This meant that with 
a heavy load of gas, Hawks would have to 
climb through twenty-four hundred feet of fog, 
in pitch darkness. 

The “Old Number Five ”, Hawks called his 
plane. It was a Lockheed, which is known to be 
a good ship for speed and for climbing. 

This time, the plane proved to be as good 


210 


AIR TRAVELERS 


a climber as ever. Once off the ground, within 
five minutes the plane had ploughed her way 
through the fog, and her pilot knew that the 
worst was over. 

For a while after this the weather was very 
good. Only as the plane neared Columbus, 
Ohio, late in the afternoon, did the clouds ahead 
suggest possible trouble. 

At this time, the radio, which had been in¬ 
stalled as a part of the equipment, came into 
good use. Just a quick movement to throw the 
switch, and a turn of the knob, and Hawks was 
listening in for a weather report given by an ex¬ 
pert who knew just what the conditions should 
be for safe flying. 

With the help of his radio, Hawks learned 
that it would be best to continue his flight to 
New York high above the banks of fog. He 
knew, even before he came to them, that there 
would be frequent holes, and that beneath, 
there would be a ceiling high enough to make 


A ROUND-TRIP FLIGHT 211 

a forced landing safe in case of motor failure. 
Beyond the Alleghenies, according to the re¬ 
port, there would be clear skies. 

Encouraged by this report, Frank Hawks 
travelled along without worry. 

It was dark before he reached Roosevelt 
Field, New York, which was to be his landing- 
place. At that time the extremities of the field 
were poorly lighted. In making his landing, 
Frank Hawks ran his plane into the steel-wire 
fence which forms a boundary on one side of the 
field. He was not hurt, and his plane received 
only small injury, but he would rather have 
ended his flight with a clean-cut landing. 

The east-to-west non-stop trip had been 
made in the record time of eighteen hours, 
twenty-one minutes and fifty-nine seconds, the 
west-to-east trip in seventeen hours and thirty- 
eight minutes—another record for speed. 

The round trip to Los Angeles and return 
had taken only thirty-six hours and forty- 



212 


AIR TRAVELERS 


eight minutes, with just seven and a half hours 
for rest and refueling, at Los Angeles. 

And it was the only round-trip non-stop 
flight that had ever been made across the United 
States! 


THE LITTLE OLD FLYING-HOTEL 


There were just two men in this hotel. 
Their names were Jackson and O’Brien, but 
they were known as “Red” and “Obie”. 

Red and Obie wanted to see how long they 
could remain in the air without returning to 
the earth. Two other men had been able to stay 
aloft for ten days. 

“It would be great to be able to beat this 
record,” Jackson and O’Brien agreed. 

The two men secured the best airplane they 
could. They chose a light Curtiss-Robertson 
plane, and named it The St . Louis Robin . “A 
Little Old Flying Hotel” they called it, and 
this is what it really was. 

The men ate their meals in it. They slept 
in it. For seventeen and a half days they did 
not leave for even a moment! 


214 AIR travelers 

The St. Louis Robin rose from the field at 
St. Louis one day in July, 1929. Around and 
around in the air above the field it circled, as 
though uncertain what to do next. 

“You will have to fly within gliding distance 
of the St. Louis airfield,” the men had been 
told. “Only by landing on this field can you 
receive credit for the flight.” 

This is why the men had to remain in one 
place. 

“Good teamwork wins many a game.” The 
two flyers knew this. One acted as operating 
pilot, the other as contact pilot, to handle sup¬ 
plies that were sent up from time to time in an¬ 
other plane. He took charge of the receiving of 
the food, too. 

Aluminum containers, three and a half feet 
long, were lowered into The St. Louis Robin 
by a rope. In the containers were chicken din¬ 
ners, and other tempting dishes. 

“A fellow gets hungry riding around in the 


THE FLYING HOTEL 215 

air day after day/’ one of them said. “He gets 
hungry for food and hungry for news.” 

Once this was known, the men were not 
neglected. Besides the delicious meals, each 
container held messages from wives and 
friends. “It will take us three weeks to answer 
all the kind and helpful expressions,” the men 
announced, after they had been up in the air 
a while. 

The flyers had to take their turns sleeping. 
For a bed, a mattress had been placed on top 
of the large gasoline tank. 

On this mattress the men had to take their 
exercises, too. It was only two feet below the 
top of the plane, but the men could move their 
arms and legs enough to keep them from get¬ 
ting too stiff for comfort. 

When the engine needed tuning, Jackson 
was the man to walk out on the catwalk and do 
the work. The catwalk was a six-inch board 
walk that ran along the outside of the plane, 


216 


AIR TRAVELERS 


to within three inches of the whirring pro¬ 
pellers. A dangerous walk Jackson had along 
this board, because the wind always blew so 
hard. O’Brien, at the controls, had to keep the 
airplane as steady as he could. 

When the men had been in the air a little 
less than a week, the engine began skipping and 
shaking. First Jackson went out along the cat- 
walk, and put in new spark-plugs. When this 
did not help, he had to go out again and work 
still further on the engine. 

The skipping and the shaking stopped, but 
Jackson had burned his hands. The two men 
thought, for a while, that their flight might 
have to be given up before they had made a 
new record. 

Fortunately, this did not have to be. After 
the repair work had been done, the motor 
worked along steadily, as if it had more power 
than ever before. As for Jackson, his burns did 
not prove serious. 


THE FLYING HOTEL 


217 

When the ten-day record had been reached, 
Jackson and O’Brien could see flags and hand¬ 
kerchiefs waving on the field below. Puffs of 
steam came from whistles, wherever there was a 
factory. All this cheered the men and gave them 
new strength. No matter when the landing 
might be, a new world record had been made. 

But the men did not land right away. Eleven 
days went by, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fif¬ 
teen, sixteen, seventeen! Even then, the motor 
was still roaring along, and the men were not 
too tired to continue. 

It was the man in charge who brought the 
flight to an end. “We have tried out the engine, 
and know that it can do wonderful work,” the 
man thought. “A splendid new record has been 
made.” 

Jackson and O’Brien would have liked to 
remain in the air until they had a record of 
five hundred hours of flying. But they did not. 
Amid shouts and cheers of thousands of people, 


2l8 


AIR TRAVELERS 


after being in the air seventeen and one-half 
days, they descended. 

In their Little Old Flying Hotel, they had 
travelled twenty-five thousand miles. 

“The men have flown around the world over 
St. Louis,” some one said. 


A BIRTHDAY TRIP 


The airplane was freshly painted gray, with 
her name in black on each side of the body. 

Colonel Lindbergh was the pilot at the take¬ 
off. Mary Pickford had been chosen to perform 
the christening. 

“Where shall I smash the bottle ?” she asked. 

“Right on the nose,” was the answer. 

Miss Pickford did as she had been told. 

“I christen you the City of Los Angeles , and 
wish you every happiness and success on this, 
your birthday,” she said. 

With this, the airplane was off, as if anxious 
to get away before there could be any more 
hitting of noses. 

The trip from Los Angeles eastward towards 
New York was to be its first,—the opening of 
a west-to-east passenger route across the coun- 


219 


220 


AIR TRAVELERS 


try. A part of the way the City of Los Angeles 
was to carry passengers—until nightfall. Then 
a railroad train would pick up the travelers. 
When day came again, another airplane would 
be ready to take the passengers on their way. 
With the help of still another train, the dis¬ 
tance to New York would be covered. 

Some of the passengers were not used to the 
noisy motors. Nor did they like the vibration 
any too well. They were only too willing to 
put into their ears some of the cotton passed 
around by a courier. 

As they peeked through the big glass win¬ 
dows, and saw how high up above the earth 
they were, perhaps they wondered if they would 
ever reach New York in safety. 

Others enjoyed every moment of the trip. 
They liked to see the houses far below. The 
automobiles were like toys, and the people as 
tiny as ants. 

A little farther to the east were the beauti- 


A BIRTHDAY TRIP 


221 


ful mountains and valleys, the desert region, 
and rivers flowing between wooded banks. 
Great squares of farmland made the country 
look like a huge green patchwork quilt. 

At times, when the airplane flew low, the 
passengers laughed to see the sheep scamper in 
this direction and that, as if to get away from 
the noisy enemy. Chickens fluttered here and 
there, flew over fences and scurried away as 
though a giant hawk were after them. 

Every once in a while the plane would strike 
what is commonly known as an air pocket. The 
ship would go into a dive, and each of the pas¬ 
sengers would make a grab for the aluminum 
table in front of him. 

“Are we falling ?” Some of the new passen¬ 
gers thought that the ship would plunge down¬ 
ward with a crash, at the end of each dive. 

A boy was selling coffee just as the ship hit 
one air pocket. The boy had the pot of coffee, 
bottles of milk, sugar and spoons in a basket 


222 


AIR TRAVELERS 


over one arm. As the airplane made the dive, 
a bottle of milk bounced out of the boy’s basket 
and fell into the lap of the nearest passenger! 

Later, there was a heavy rain-storm. 

“Now, perhaps our end has come!” some of 
the first-time-in-the-air passengers may have 
thought. 

But their end had not come. Instead, with no 
traffic to hinder, the airplane moved forward 
speedily, and was able to get ahead of the 
storm. 

Throughout the whole distance, there were 
no accidents on either planes or railroad trains. 
Most of the time the passengers enjoyed smooth 
riding. Some read magazines or papers, others 
wrote letters, played cards, or sent messages by 
radio. 

When New York was reached, just two days 
had passed since the passengers had started on 
their journey. This was sooner than if they had 
taken a railroad train or boat all of the way. 


A BIRTHDAY TRIP 223 

There was much less dust too, and there were 
no cinders to annoy them. 

The City of Los Angeles started this west-to- 
east Air-Railway service in July, 1929. There 
were other passenger airplanes in the United 
States and in Europe at that time. There are 
many others now. But perhaps not one ever 
made such an important trip on her birthday . 


THE GRAF ZEPPELIN 

A boy stood on the top of an automobile at 
Lakehurst, New Jersey. 

“Here she comes!” The boy danced about 
and waved his arms excitedly. 

Rip! One leg went through the top of the 
automobile, and there was a pinwheel of legs 
and arms. But the boy kept on pointing sky¬ 
ward. 

“Here she comes!” The crowd of people 
around about took up the cry. 

And there she was! The largest aircraft in 
the world, the Graf Zeppelin , had returned 
from her trip around the world. 

On August 8th, 1929, the giant aircraft had 
left Lakehurst. Over the Atlantic Ocean she 
had travelled, and on to Friedrichshafen, Ger¬ 
many. Four days later, the great dirigible had 


224 




cS 


a 

t- 


7i 

O 

be 

a 

> 

c3 

a> 

h-1 
















THE GRAF ZEPPELIN 225 

set out again, across Russia and cold, lonesome 
Siberia, to Tokio, Japan. Four days for refuel¬ 
ing and for going over the machinery, and the 
party was off once more, to cross the Pacific 
Ocean and the United States. 

On the way, violent winds tore and clawed. 
At one time, the great ship jumped up and 
down like a stiff-legged bucking broncho, the 
winds were so rough. And there were the usual 
fogs and storms. 

But the Graf Zeppelin had kept on, at an 
average speed of fifty miles an hour, and in 
twenty-one days, seven hours and twenty-six 
minutes, had completed her trip. 

More than three hundred sailors had been 
chosen to help the Graf Zeppelin get into the 
hangar upon her landing at Lakehurst. Here 
she was to stay for a day or two, before return¬ 
ing to Germany. 

The sailors had to get hold of the long ropes 
which had been let down from the giant dirigi- 


226 


AIR TRAVELERS 


ble. They were busy with this work, when a 
great mass of water came down and gave them 
a merry ducking. 

The men laughed, and shook themselves like 
spaniels just out of a puddle. 

“It is the water ballast,” one of the ground 
officers said. 

When the Graf Zeppelin had been brought 
to rest, those who had been aboard climbed 
down the landing ladder. In all, sixty-one per¬ 
sons had been carried by the Graf Zeppelin on 
the greater part of the trip—twenty of them 
passengers. 

Of the latter, one was a woman, Lady Drum¬ 
mond Hay, who had written various accounts 
of the trip along the way. She seemed greatly 
pleased to have been able to be a member of 
such an important expedition. 

“I am the happiest woman in the world,” she 
said. 

Dr. Eckener, the Graf Zeppelin's German 



THE GRAF ZEPPELIN 227 

master, seemed just as well pleased. He fairly 
beamed with smiles, as he shook hands with the 
Naval officers. 

“Gott sei Dank! Thank God!” were his 
words. 


RICHARD BYRD FLIES TO THE 

SOUTH POLE 


A BLIZZARD. 

Fog. 

Head winds. 

A bit of dirt in the fuel lines. 

A flaw in a piece of steel. 

Any one of these might have kept Richard 
Byrd from making a successful flight to the 
South Pole, from his base at Little America, 
eight hundred miles away. 

Richard Byrd knew about all the dangers, 
and prepared his Ford monoplane as well as he 
could. “The Floyd Bennett (as she was called) 
was more carefully groomed than any thorough¬ 
bred horse going into a race,” Richard Byrd 
said. 


228 


TO THE SOUTH POLE 229 

One great danger the men discussed often. 
This was the “Hump”, or part of the polar 
mountain range over which the plane would 
have to pass. 

The Floyd Bennett , with her three Wright 
Whirlwind motors, made an excellent take-off 
at 3:29 o’clock on the afternoon of November 
28, 1929. 

Richard Byrd was the navigator. With him 
were three other men, One, called June, at¬ 
tended to the motion-picture camera, the radio, 
and the gas-tank valves, besides relieving the 
pilot now and then. Balchen was the pilot. 
From Richard Byrd’s table, with navigation 
charts spread out upon it, a trolley ran to Bal- 
chen’s control cabin. The navigator sent mes¬ 
sages to the pilot over the trolley. Often, when 
Balchen received one of these messages, he 
would turn and smile. This meant that he un¬ 
derstood. 

McKinley, the camera-man, had all he could 


AIR TRAVELERS 


230 

do to take pictures of important places between 
Little America and the South Pole. 

Glaciers, mountains covered with snow, 
plains glistening in the sunlight—these and 
many other beautiful pictures in black and 
white the men saw as they flew along. 

And as they travelled, they kept thinking 
about the “Hump’ 5 . Would they be able to get 
over it? 

At last the dreaded place came into view, 
and the flyers could see that they had several 
passes from which to choose. Richard Byrd 
went forward and stood behind the pilot so that 
the two could figure it out together. 

The highest point of what was known as the 
Axel Heiberg Pass was ten thousand, five hun¬ 
dred feet. The explorer, Amundsen, had re¬ 
ported this. On either side of the pass were 
towering peaks, reaching much higher than the 
Floyd Bennett could ever climb with her heavy 
load. 


TO THE SOUTH POLE 231 

Another pass, which was uncharted, seemed 
to be wider, and not quite so high. This one 
Richard Byrd and his pilot chose. 

And then the climb began. June filled the 
main tank with gasoline, and dropped the 
empty tins overboard. Each tin weighed one 
pound, and every pound taken from the plane’s 
load made climbing easier. 

When ninety-six hundred feet up, the Floyd 
Bennett slackened her speed. It seemed that she 
was as high as she could go. The nose of the 
plane would move up, then slide down, move 
up, and fall off again. 

The pass was narrow. There was no room in 
which to turn around. The plane would have 
to go ahead, or go down. 

There was but one thing to do. The plane’s 
load would have to be lightened, to make 
climbing easier. 

Gasoline or food—which should be thrown 
overboard? Richard Byrd decided on giving 


AIR TRAVELERS 


232 

up a part of the food, and the order was given 
to do this. 

McKinley had already hauled one of the one 
hundred and twenty-five pound sacks to the 
trap-door. As soon as he received the signal, 
the door was opened, and down upon the white 
glacier below fell the brown bag of food. 

The Floyd Bennett did better with even this 
much of her load gone. 

But it wasn’t help enough. Another one hun¬ 
dred and twenty-five pound bag had to be given 
up. Two hundred and fifty pounds of food, this 
made in all—enough to keep four men a whole 
month! 

But losing the food saved the ship. The plane 
shot upward! Then it began to climb so much 
better that the “Hump” was crossed with 
five hundred feet to spare! 

With the South Pole straight ahead, less 
than three hundred miles away, to reach it 
was likely to be an easy matter. 


TO THE SOUTH POLE 233 

At 1:14 a.m., November 29th, Greenwich 
Civil Time, the South Pole was reached. Eleven 
thousand feet high the Floyd Bennett was fly¬ 
ing, about fourteen hundred feet above the 
snow-covered plateau. 

Richard Byrd opened the trap-door, and 
dropped over the Pole a small flag weighted 
with a stone. The stone had come from the 
grave of his friend, Floyd Bennett, who had 
flown with him to the North Pole. 

The radio operator, June, sent this message 
to Little America, to be relayed to New York: 

“My calculations show that we have reached 
the vicinity of the South Pole. Flying high 
for a survey. Byrd.” 

As for the South Pole—it was a white, snowy 
spot—a very quiet one, in the center of a plain 
that seemed to have no limits. 

There were no mountains in sight, but clouds 

on the eastern horizon caused the Avers to race 

* 

for the mountain passes. It had been hard 


AIR TRAVELERS 


234 

enough to get through in clear weather. In a 
storm it would be almost impossible. 

A wind astern helped the Floyd Bennett to 
win the race. Ahead of the storm she hurried 
along, over the “Hump” and on to the gasoline 
and food cache, where a landing had been 
planned. 

An hour later, the plane was off on her last 
lap. With the help of the sun compass and the 
drift indicator, Richard Byrd was able to direct 
the plane’s flight to a safe landing at Little 
America. There, at 10:08 a.m., on November 
29th, the historic flight ended. 

Richard Byrd then had the honor of being 
the only man who had ever flown over both 
the North and South Poles! 


FRANK HAWKS SEES AMERICA IN 

HIS GLIDER 

Frank Hawks knew that his round-trip 
flight across the United States had helped to 
interest people in aviation. 

What should he do next? 

A happy thought came. Why not ride across 
the country in a glider? With an airplane to 
furnish the power and tow the smaller machine, 
this could be done. Those unable to afford air¬ 
planes might become interested in learning to 
fly with gliders. This might lead to their com¬ 
ing to fly with power, later. “For them, it would 
be coming into Aviation by the back door,” 
Frank Hawks explained. 

The Texaco Company could see the good 
points of such a flight, and construction of a 
special glider was begun. For the first time, 


235 


AIR TRAVELERS 


236 

the glider was made with an enclosed cabin. 
An enclosed hood gave added protection. 
“Facing the wind and the sun with no en¬ 
closure would be anything but comfortable,” 
Frank Hawks had argued. A five-hundred- 
foot tow-line was made to connect the two 
ships. Inside the towing-cable was a telephone 
wire, with the aid of which the pilot of the 
plane might speak with the pilot of the glider. 
The telephone cord was made with a plug that 
would pull out whenever the plane should cut 
loose from the glider. The pilot of the tow-ship 
could also disconnect his end of the cable when¬ 
ever he wished to do so. Special instruments, 
brakes, and other conveniences made the new 
glider better than any that had been made up 
to that time. 

The glider, christened the Texaco T aglet , 
was built during the winter of 1929-30. On 
the 30th of March, 1930, all was ready for the 
flight. 


FRANK HAWKS IN HIS GLIDER 237 

“Duke” Jernigin was to pilot the tow-ship, 
which was a Waco biplane with a Whirlwind 
motor. Wallace Franklin, one of the builders 
of the plane, was to ride with him. It was to 
be one of Wallace Franklin’s duties to wind up 
the cable with a reel whenever the glider pilot 
descended. And Frank Hawks, it had been 
planned, should descend at twenty-one differ¬ 
ent cities along the route, to give exhibitions 
of gliding and soaring. 

The air-train left Lindbergh Field, San 
Diego, on a Sunday. By the following Sunday, 
it was hoped, Van Cortlandt Park, New York, 
would be reached. 

A large crowd watched the flyers disappear 
in the distance, at the beginning of their 
twenty-eight hundred mile journey. 

The take-off was smooth enough, but there 
was plenty of roughness when the flyers were 
farther on their way. To Yuma and Phoenix 
for fuel, and to Tucson for the night, were the 


AIR TRAVELERS 


238 

plans. En route to these places there was rough 
travelling from the beginning. And the 
nearer the flyers got to Tucson, the worse the 
conditions became, But, without mishap, a 
landing was made, within sight of ten thousand 
persons. Frank Hawks and his companions 
were very tired because of the rough flying that 
they had just been through, but thought that 
the worst was over. In this, they were mistaken. 

The next morning, when barely off the 
ground, the air-train was struck by a sharp slap 
of wind. The tow-ship was thrown one way, the 
Eaglet another, and the tow-line was snapped 
in two. A whole day had to be spent in repair¬ 
ing the damage! 

Off again, to meet more rough weather. 
The men hoped for smooth flying by the time 
El Paso should have been reached, but it was 
not to be. Instead, all flying’had been called 
off at that place, and the pilots of the air-train 
had all they could do to get down in safety. 


FRANK HAWKS IN HIS GLIDER 239 

Leaving El Paso, there was time to be made 
up because of the delay in repairing the cable 
at Tucson. The tow-plane, with its glider at¬ 
tached, managed to fly seven hundred and ten 
miles in one day. 

Then, with calm weather at last, came 
Wichita Falls, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Spring- 
field (Mo.), East St. Louis, Terre Haute, In¬ 
dianapolis, Columbus, and Cleveland. Buffalo 
was reached on the eighth and last day. 

It had been planned to make just one short 
halt between Buffalo and New York City, on 
this last day of flying. The stop was to have 
been at Elmira, but rough weather was at hand 
and plans had to be changed. Such a violent 
wind was blowing that it was thought best to 
stop at Syracuse and at Albany, instead. 

At Syracuse came the most dangerous take¬ 
off of the entire trip. Just off the ground, rising 
currents of air were encountered. By spiraling, 
and keeping in these up-currents, the aviator 


AIR TRAVELERS 


240 

climbed two or three thousand feet at a time. 
The crowd was watching eagerly below, and if 
there had been time, Frank Hawks could have 
entertained them for hours by soaring around 
over their heads. 

At Albany, the gale-like winds were worse 
than ever. A dust storm blew across the field, 
and all flying had been postponed. 

But the flyers had to keep on, in order to 
reach New York on schedule time. Even at a 
very early hour, a large crowd was awaiting 
the arrival of the unique air-train. 

After taking off at Albany, there was more 
hard flying. At one time the Waco ship in 
front, was lifted up and thrown down by a 
sudden violent tearing and twisting of the 
wind, and the pilot had to use all the skill at 
his command, in order to pull his ship through 
in safety. 

In spite of all the lurches and plunges 
through the bumpy air, the train got away at 


FRANK HAWKS IN HIS GLIDER 241 

last, and with the leaving of the city of Albany, 
the strong winds were also left behind. 

The rest of the trip was made under fairly 
good flying conditions, and at Van Cortlandt 
Park, a gentle landing was made. 

Best of all, in spite of the roughness of the 
trip, the goal had been reached on scheduled 
time. Frank Hawks had seen America by 
glider, as he had planned. He had taken only 
as much time as he had set aside for the purpose. 
Just eight days had passed since the take-off. 
Of this there had been forty-four hours and ten 
minutes of real flying, thirty-five hours in tow 
of the Waco, and the rest of the time in soaring 
above towns and cities. 

To-day, the Eaglet glider rests in the Smith¬ 
sonian Institute at Washington, D. C., with 
other well-known ships—among these the 
Spirit of St. Louis. 


A SPEED RECORD 


“If you will provide the plane, I should like 
to try to break the record which the Lindberghs 
have just made,” Frank Hawks told the officials 
of the Texaco Company, of whose Aviation 
Department he was in charge. 

On Easter Sunday, May 20, 1930, Mr. and 
Mrs. Lindbergh had flown from Los Angeles 
to New York. With one stop for fuel, they 
covered the distance in fourteen hours, forty- 
five minutes and thirty-two seconds. 

Up to that time, Frank Hawks had held the 
record for fastest flying from west to east across 
the United States. 

The officials of the Texaco Company had 
learned that money put into planes driven by 
Frank Hawks was money well spent for adver- 


242 


A SPEED RECORD 243 

tising. They were not slow to give their con¬ 
sent to the new venture. 

A new plane was built—the Texaco 13, or 
Mystery Ship, as it was called,—a red and 
white monoplane with a Wright Whirlwind 
motor. 

When the plane was completed, Hawks flew 
in it from New York to Los Angeles, since the 
flight would have to be a west-to-east one. 
While on this trip, he was able to try out the 
new motor, and study ways and means of cut¬ 
ting down on time spent in the air. 

Five stops were made for fuel, but Frank 
Hawks, by watching his gasoline meter very 
closely, found that it would be possible to get 
along with only three fuel stops. 

From the Glendale Airport, Los Angeles, the 
Mystery Ship took off in the moonlight, very 
early on the morning of August 13, 1930— 
at 6:16:27 a.m., New York time. 

As she passed between mountains which rise 


AIR TRAVELERS 


244 

abruptly, just out of Glendale, the moon 
lighted up the way. As the speedy pilot directed 
her across the Mojave Desert, the moon sank 
behind the mountains in back of the plane. 

Over the National Forests of Arizona, the 
sky began to brighten with the coming of dawn. 
Near Flagstaff, Arizona, the sun could be seen 
rising above the ridges ahead. 

One of the three stops for fuel was made at 
Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Captain 
Hawks remained in the cockpit of his plane, 
and ate one of the sandwiches which his mother 
had put up for him in Los Angeles. 

On again, at a height of eight to ten thou¬ 
sand feet, came the fastest flying of the trip, 
with the help of a thirty-four-mile tail wind. 
The Arizona desert, the tip of Texas, the 
Northern Oklahoma wheat lands and ranges 
were left behind, and into the second refuel- 
ing stop of Wichita, Kansas, Captain Hawks 
brought his plane. 


A SPEED RECORD 


245 

With only fifteen minutes’ delay, the Mys¬ 
tery Ship was off again. 

Rains, near St. Louis, caused the flyer to 
direct his plane upward above the storm to 
secure a clearer course. 

Then, without further trouble, Indianapolis, 
the third fueling stop, was made, shortly after 
three o’clock in the afternoon. 

Captain Hawks was beginning to be very 
hungry, but decided to lose no time in eating, 
since he hoped to be able to have dinner in New 
York that evening. 

Against a contrary wind the rest of the way, 
with smoke and haze shutting off a clear view 
of the ground, Captain Hawks raced along at 
a speed ranging between two hundred and ten 
miles and two hundred and sixty miles an 
hour. 

North of Dayton and Columbus, past the 
hilly Pennsylvania section, over the dark, 
smoky Pittsburgh area, above the green firs and 


246 AIR TRAVELERS 

forests farther east, then across the Delaware, 
the Texaco 13 shot forward. 

By this time, the bluish coloring of the east¬ 
ern horizon promised that the Atlantic was near 
at hand, and so it proved to be. 

At 6:41 p.m., when the Texaco 13 reached 
her goal, a crowd had gathered to give welcome. 

Mrs. Hawks climbed upon one of the wings 
of the plane, to be the first to greet her husband. 
Members of the Mayor’s Committee were on 
hand, as were the President and other officials 
of the Texaco Company. The around-the-world 
flyer, Captain Eric Nelson, and other well- 
known people were present. 

Captain Hawks smiled as he climbed out of 
his monoplane. 

“When do we eat?” he asked. 

As he drove away to the Ambassador Hotel 
in one of the Mayor’s official cars, reports went 
out to all parts of the country about the unusual 
record for speed that had just been made. In 


A SPEED RECORD 


247 

his Mystery Ship , Frank Hawks had covered 
the two thousand, five hundred and ten miles 
from Los Angeles to New York in twelve hours, 
twenty-five minutes, and three seconds! 


IN A SECOND-HAND BUS 


The record of “The Little Old Flying 
Hotel” was a hard one to beat, but in what they 
called their “Second-Hand Bus”, John and 
Kenneth Hunter were able to remain in the air 
still longer. Five hundred and fifty-three hours, 
forty-six minutes and thiry seconds, or a little 
over twenty-three days, was the new record. 

Up into the air they went on June 11, 1930, 
and remained aloft until July 4th! 

What was called the “Bus” was a Stinson- 
Detroiter monoplane, which had already flown 
seventy thousand miles. The Hunter brothers 
named it the City of Chicago , and added an¬ 
other forty-one thousand, four hundred and 
seventy-five miles, in their record-breaking en¬ 
durance flight. 

The brothers came from Sparta, Illinois. 
With them came their mother and sister, to do 

248 


IN A SECOND-HAND BUS 249 

the cooking, their brothers Walter and Albert, 
to operate the refueling plane. The wife of one 
of the brothers was in the party, as were a num¬ 
ber of friends from the home town. 

While in the air, the men did not suffer for 
want of food. The mother and sister sent up 
fried chicken, frankfurters, hard-boiled eggs, 
and assorted “goodies” which they had pre¬ 
pared for the flyers at the airport below. 

But the men were bearded, oil-stained, and 
dirty when they came down. Their legs were 
stiff from being in cramped quarters for so long 
a time. They were haggard from lack of sleep, 
too, having had only four or five hours’ rest at 
a time. During the last two or three days, so 
many sightseers had flown about them in air¬ 
planes that even their few hours of sleep had 
been broken. 

“It took us a week to get used to living in the 
air,” one of the brothers said. “After that we 
felt fine, except that we felt the need of sleep.” 


PICCARD'S PLUNGE 

Eight or nine miles above the earth is a cold, 
windless region, where the moon appears as 
bright in the daytime as when seen from the 
earth in the middle of the night. The stars shine 
by day and clouds never form. It is a great 
ocean of blue, and is known as the stratosphere. 

Into this great ocean plunged an aluminum 
ball attached to a huge balloon, one day in 
May, 1931. 

In the seven-foot, oxygen-filled ball were a 
Swiss scientist, Professor August Piccard, and 
his assistant, Charles Kipfer. Fifty-two thou¬ 
sand feet, or more than ten miles up, they were 
able to go before a descent had to be made. 

At the highest levels, the men found the tem¬ 
perature to be 148° below zero! 


250 


PICCARD’S PLUNGE 251 

As for views, there was nothing much to be 
seen, apart from blue space. 

On the way up, the aluminum ball sprang a 
leak, which the men plugged with cotton waste 
and a sort of chemical jelly. 

Just before the balloon started to come 
down, a valve jammed, and gas could not be 
released for the descent. The men had a double 
supply of oxygen, or they would have lost their 
lives. Just two hours more, and there would 
have been a sad ending to the flight. 

As it was, they were in the air eighteen hours, 
which was eleven hours longer than they had 
planned. 

Coming down, the men had to be careful not 
to release too much gas, so that the aluminum 
ball would not drop like a stone. 

Slowly the balloon descended over the snow- 
covered Alps mountains. Fortunately, as they 
sank farther, the gondola touched ground on 
the soft snowy covering of a flat ice field. 


252 AIR TRAVELERS 

One hundred thousand feet, next time,” Pic¬ 
card’s assistant, Kipfer, says he will try to go, 
as soon as a special kind of balloon-bag can be 
made. 


POST AND GATTY AROUND 
THE WORLD 


Only eight days, fifteen hours, and fifty-one 
minutes, it took Wiley Post and Harold Gatty 
to circle the globe. 

With very little sleep — only fifteen hours 
for the entire journey, with almost no delay for 
weather reports, the “two young men in a 
hurry” raced around the world! 

A quick take-off from Roosevelt Field, New 
York, scarcely more than a turn-around at Har¬ 
bor Grace, Newfoundland, then over the At¬ 
lantic Ocean, the aviators travelled. They had 
to fight their way through fog and rain, but their 
time for the ocean crossing was the shortest ever 
made by any flyers covering the same distance 
— only a little more than sixteen hours. 

“Hello, England, we’ve done it!” Gatty 

353 


AIR TRAVELERS 


254 

said, when the machine had come to a stand¬ 
still at Chester. 

A short delay, and the two were off again, 
this time to Berlin. 

A few hours of sleep at this city, a bath and 
a breakfast of coffee and rolls, ham and eggs, 
then away again. 

“We must move on while flying conditions 
are so good,” one of the flyers said. 

The Russian steppes and the Siberian wil¬ 
derness were spanned in a smooth, swift flight. 
One daring jump took the men to Moscow, an¬ 
other to Novo-Sibersk, still another to Irkutsk. 

Here they had a brief rest, inspected their 
plane, and left abruptly. Without giving no¬ 
tice, they climbed into their machine, waved 
good-bye, and hurried off in a cloud of dust! 

Beyond Irkutsk, over some of the wildest 
country in the world, to Blagoveschensk, went 
the flyers. 

At this place they had their first mishap, 


POST AND GATTY 255 

when their plane, in landing, became stuck in 
a mud-hole. Fourteen and a half hours had to be 
used up in getting the plane out of the mud, 
with horses and a tractor! 

Khabarovsk was the next stop; then Nome, 
Alaska, over the desolate north and the Bering 
Sea. Fogs and storms did what they could to 
delay the men. It rained so hard, a part of the 
time, that Wiley Post, the pilot, could see 
nothing beyond the glass in front of him for 
hours. 

But Alaska was reached in safety, and a 
landing was made at Solomon, a few miles to 
the east of Nome. There was a short rest here, 
and a hasty meal of fried chicken. 

Gatty was bruised in the chest and in the arm 
when struck by one of the propellers, while try¬ 
ing to crank the motor, but he would not delay. 

On an attempted take-off the plane nosed 
over, because of the rough ground. When it 
stopped, one of the propellers was found to be 


AIR TRAVELERS 


256 

bent. Post pounded it into shape with a ham¬ 
mer and a wrench, and the flyers were off! 

Only a short rest again at Fairbanks, the 
next stop. At two-thirty in the morning, the 
men were called. 

Post yawned when awakened at this early 
hour. “It’s a hard life,” he said, but hurried to 
get out to the field. 

At Edmonton, Alberta, Post was so tired 
that he fell asleep and rolled off his chair, while 
waiting for the supper of omelet and toast, 
which he and Gatty had ordered. 

After the meal only a few hours’ sleep was 
allowed, but with a shave and a bath, the 
men were refreshed enough to be on their way 
again. 

“It’s downhill now. Nothing to it,” Gatty 
said. 

“It’s only ‘duck soup’ from now on,” Post 
added. “But we’ll be mighty glad to get home 
after this grind.” 


POST AND GATTY 


257 

A twenty-four hour rain had left the flying 
field at Edmonton in such a soggy condition 
that a take-off had to be made from one of the 
town’s concrete streets. 

Out of Edmonton, flying conditions were not 
very good, but the racing monoplane hurried 
along in spite of rain and mist. 

A delay of only forty-five minutes at Cleve¬ 
land, Ohio, and the last lap of the journey had 
come. 

Meanwhile, the city of New York was doing 
its part in the way of hurrying. Preparations 
were being made for receiving the flyers with 
great honor, while the wives were rushing east¬ 
ward, one from California and the other from 
Oklahoma, to take part in the welcoming cele¬ 
bration. 

On the evening of July 1, 1931, at ten 
o’clock, New York daylight-saving time, Post 
and Gatty climbed out of their now famous 
monoplane, the Winnie Mae. 


258 AIR TRAVELERS 

' They were tired, but happy about their suc¬ 
cess. 

Fifteen thousand, four hundred and sev¬ 
enty-four miles in eight days, fifteen hours and 
fifty-one minutes! 

“Greatest flight in the history of the world!” 
many agreed. 


A NON-STOP FLIGHT , NEW YORK 

TO TURKEY 


Russell Boardman and John Polando 
smiled broadly and shook their own hands over 
their heads when they left their plane at Istan¬ 
bul, Turkey, on July 30, 1931. 

In their monoplane, Cape Cod , they had 
made a non-stop flight of five thousand miles 
from New York City — the longest that had 
ever been made in an airplane. 

“The hardest part of the trip was over the 
Alps,” one of the men said. “And while cross¬ 
ing the Atlantic, only once could we see the 
water below. This was at Newfoundland. Fogs 

hid the ocean from view all the rest of the 

, • )) 

time. 

“We took turns piloting,” the flyers ex¬ 
plained. “While one was at the controls, the 

259 


26 o 


AIR TRAVELERS 


other slept for short periods of about half an 
hour at a time. 55 

“As for the forty-nine hours that we spent in 
the air — we could have made better time, had 
it not been for the fogs over France. 55 


A “FLYING ENGINE” 


c< It is a flying engine.” This is what experts 
had to say when they examined the Laird bi¬ 
plane used by Major James H. Doolittle in his 
record-breaking United States transcontinen¬ 
tal flight, September 4, 1931. 

The special super-charged and geared Wasp 
Jr. engine could develop close to six hundred 
horse power. The propeller was geared to per¬ 
mit higher engine speed and the use of a larger 
air-screw. The plane was streamlined to the 
limit of modern knowledge of aerodynamics. 

The cockpit was so small that Major Doo¬ 
little, although only five feet four inches in 
height, could hardly get into it. For a seat, the 
flyer had only his parachute pack, which rested 
on the floorboards. 

In this specially made plane, Major Doo- 

261 


262 AIR TRAVELERS 

little raced from Burbank, California, to New¬ 
ark, New Jersey, with a bullet-like speed, aver¬ 
aging just under four miles a minute. Eleven 
hours, sixteen minutes, and ten seconds were re¬ 
quired for the cross-country flight. 

From the time the checkered flag was 
dropped at Burbank, California, at 5:35 a.m., 
eastern daylight time, there were no seconds 
lost. 

A run of only four hundred feet was needed 
for a take-off. Almost vertically the plane rose, 
to a height of five thousand feet, then at a les¬ 
sened angle of climb, started to gather speed 
for the San Bernardino Pass. 

At a height of eleven thousand feet the climb 
ended. 

The plane was levelled off and hurried 
along, one thousand feet above mountain- 
peaks that seemed to be rushing past as tele¬ 
phone poles rush by car windows. 

Once the mountains were cleared, Major 


A “FLYING ENGINE” 263 

Doolittle began to direct his flight to lower al¬ 
titudes. He came down only one hundred feet 
a minute, and at the same time raced forward 
four miles. He followed no regular air-lane. 
The shortest route to the first stopping place 
was chosen, and the engine throttle opened 
wide. 

At Albuquerque, New Mexico, there was a 
seven-minute delay for refueling. The flyer 
drank a glass of water, then raced on again to 
the next stop at Kansas City, Missouri. 

On this leg the plane averaged two hundred 
and forty miles an hour, the fastest average 
speed of the cross-country journey. The air 
made a screaming noise, the engine roared — 
a noisy flight but a sure one. Kansas City was 
reached in safety and in record-breaking time. 

Only a few minutes’ delay again, and the 
plane was off—this time headed for Cleve¬ 
land, Ohio. 

In all, seven planes were racing to Cleveland 



AIR TRAVELERS 


264 

on that day, as part of an Air Derby. The 
speedy flyer reached the city far ahead of his 
competitors, and did not know where they were. 

At Cleveland, inclement weather made 
landing difficult. Major Doolittle had to fight 
his way to the airport, and mud flew in all di¬ 
rections from the plane on the runway. 

Major Doolittle had to pause long enough 
at this stopping-place to report on having won 
the Air Derby, for which a prize of seventy- 
five hundred dollars had been offered. While 
mechanics hastily refueled his plane, the flyer 
greeted Mrs. Doolittle and his two sons, James, 
ten, and John, nine, who had come from St. 
Louis to watch him win the race. 

Then away he went again, this time to New 
York for the transcontinental record. 

With difficulty, Major Doolittle left the 
slippery field at Cleveland. On the way to New 
York much bad weather was encountered. 

A blackened sky ahead first gave warning of 


A “FLYING ENGINE” 265 

trouble to come. In thunderstorms that fol¬ 
lowed Major Doolittle had to fly by instru¬ 
ments while he crouched behind the cowling of 
the cockpit for protection from the stinging 
lash of the pelting rain. 

In spite of this, the plane shot forward at its 
high rate of speed, up or down, wherever flying 
conditions were best. 

Over the Alleghenies, there were times when 
the speedy airman could hardly see where the 
hills were, but the direct route was followed. 

After reaching a place thirty miles west of 
Newark, the thunder showers were left behind. 

In a diving, wide circle, the plane tore 
around the edge of the Newark Airport and 
touched ground at a speed of two hundred and 
seventy-five miles an hour. The plane was 
spattered with mud and stained with soot. The 
flyer himself was mud-stained and his white 
linen knickers were torn from hasty climbs in 
and out of the small cockpit. 


266 


AIR TRAVELERS 


Major Doolittle was dazed from the carbon- 
monoxide gas fumes which had seeped into his 
cockpit enclosure from the open exhaust of the 
nine-cylinder engine in front. But he did not 
wait long. A last hurried refueling, and he was 
off again to break his own record in a return 
flight to the Air Derby at Cleveland. 

Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty- 
two miles had been covered in the day’s flight 
which came to an end at the city of Cleveland. 
Two prizes, amounting to ten thousand dollars 
had been won. A new transcontinental record 
had been made. 

As for the plane, so like a “racing engine,” 
—it was still in good condition, except for a 
few minor injuries caused by the rushing wind. 

Major Doolittle made very little of his feat 
in speaking over the radio, later. 

“The flight was so very uneventful, it was 
almost monotonous,” he said. 


I 


THE PACIFIC OCEAN CROSSED IN 
NON-STOP FLIGHT 

Several flyers had crossed the Pacific Ocean 
in two or more hops. The Graf Zeppelin had 
made the trip from Tokyo to Los Angeles with¬ 
out a stop. But the Pacific Ocean had never 
been spanned in non-stop flight by airplane, 
until Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon 
made their crossing in October, 1931. 

The airmen left Samushira Beach, Japan at 
5:10 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, Saturday, 
October 3rd, and landed at Wenatchee, Wash¬ 
ington, at 10:14 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, 
October 5th. 

In order to make better mileage and speed, 
the landing-gear of the plane had been dropped 
shortly after leaving Japan. Just before glid¬ 
ing to the ground at Wenatchee, one hundred 

267 


268 


AIR TRAVELERS 


gallons of gasoline were thrown out. This was 
done to prevent possible fire upon landing 
without the usual gear. 

The plane jolted along the ground in a cloud 
of dust, tipped over on her nose, and then set¬ 
tled back. The propeller was damaged but the 
flyers were able to alight unhurt, except that 
Herndon had been cut over his left eye by the 
damaged propeller. 

The two men were in their woolen socks 
when they came out of their plane. “We have 
been in Japan so long, we are still going bare¬ 
footed,” Pangborn explained laughingly. 

A representative of the Japanese newspa¬ 
per, Asahi , stood by with a check for twenty- 
five thousand dollars, which had been offered as 
a reward to the first flyer who should cross the 
Pacific Ocean in a non-stop flight from Tokyo. 

For three months the newspaper representa¬ 
tive had been waiting in Washington to make 
the award. 


NON-STOP PACIFIC FLIGHT 269 

“Very glad to see you, boys,” he said. 

Asked why they had not continued on their 
way to Salt Lake City to better the five thou¬ 
sand mile long distance record of Polando and 
Boardman, the aviators explained that heavy 
fog and a barograph out of repair had caused 
them to turn back when they were almost as 
far as Spokane, Washington. 

According to the airmen, the greatest thrill 
of their flight of forty-five hundred and sixty- 
five miles came when the plane was about three 
thousand miles from the Japan coast. At this 
point the engine came to a full stop! 

“My heart came up into my mouth, that 
time,” Herndon said in telling of the experi¬ 
ence. 

An empty gas tank had caused the trouble. 
The flyers worked as quickly as they could to 
supply the motor with the needed fuel, but two 
thousand feet of altitude were lost before the 
work was finished. 


AIR TRAVELERS 


270 

Ice on the wings made the plane logy at the 
flat end of the Alaskan Gulf, but the strong en¬ 
gine carried the extra load without mishap, al¬ 
though at diminished speed. 

Good weather favored the flyers almost all 
the way. Toward the end of the trip, thick 
weather and fogs were encountered, but only 
once was their plane endangered because of 
storms. This was over western Washington, 
during the last hours of the flight. 

The successful non-stop Pacific crossing 
made by Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon 
had been preceded by a number of unfortunate 
mishaps. 

In trying to better the around-the-world rec¬ 
ord of Post and Gatty, they had been forced to 
land at Khabarovsk, Siberia because of a dam¬ 
aged wing. 

A flight from Tokyo to Seattle was planned 
next, but their plane was seized by the Jap¬ 
anese Government and the flyers were arrested 


NON-STOP PACIFIC FLIGHT 


271 

for flying over a fortified area and taking pho¬ 
tographs without permit. 

Then came the Pacific Ocean flight. In span¬ 
ning the long stretch of this great body of 
water, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon 
succeeded in accomplishing a feat which had 
balked the efforts of many other aviators. 


THE AKRON 


Largest, fastest, strongest, safest, and most 
comfortable: 

All this may be said of the ZRS-4 , the new 
rigid dirigible balloon which was built in the 
plant of the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation at 
Akron, Ohio, and which became the Akron of 
the United States Navy on October 27, 1931. 

Seven hundred and eighty-five feet long, 
with a maximum diameter of one hundred and 
thirty-two and nine-tenths feet, and a gas ca¬ 
pacity of six and a half million cubic feet, she 
is the largest air vessel ever built. Two hun¬ 
dred and seven persons have already been 
carried by her at one time, and eight hundred 
may be carried. The great Dornier seaplane, 
DO-X , has thus been put into second place 
with her total of one hundred and sixty-nine 


272 



Photograph by Keystone. 





THE AKRON 


273 

persons taken into the air over Lake Constance, 
Switzerland. 

Driven by eight engines, the Akron has a 
maximum speed of eighty-four miles an hour, 
which is greater than that of any other lighter- 
than-air ship, and faster than any large surface 
vessel can travel. She can cruise nine thousand 
one hundred and eighty miles without refuel¬ 
ing. 

As for strength, a storm such as destroyed the 
Shenandoah would have to be more than three 
times as severe to make wreckage of the Akron . 
Step by step, throughout her construction, all 
parts have been tried out. Girders, joints, fit¬ 
tings, and rudders have been made with the 
greatest care. During the tests the ship was 
loaded with tons of weight. It seemed like an 
attempt to break her back. In the air, she was 
made to dive and climb at speeds thought to 
be dangerous in former practice. An ordinary 
office elevator ascends at about two hundred 


AIR TRAVELERS 


274 

and forty feet a minute. According to specifica¬ 
tions, the Akron had to be made to climb twelve 
hundred feet in a minute, and she can actually 
climb four thousand feet in that short time. 

For safety, non-inflammable helium has been 
used. The twelve bags which contain the gas are 
enclosed in a system of wire and cord netting. 
They have a tightly drawn outer covering of 
cotton cloth coated with several thicknesses of 
acetate “dope” to smooth out the contour of the 
hull and to serve as protection from the weather. 

No smoking is allowed on the Akron. A fire¬ 
proof galley makes safe the area containing the 
gas cook-stove. As for a breakdown, the strongly 
made parts of the vessel make this unlikely. For 
keeping in touch with other ships and places, the 
most powerful radio used by lighter-than-air 
vessels has been installed. 

Hot-air heat makes living quarters comfor¬ 
table. Electricity is used for lighting, for a small 
part of the cooking, for telephones, fans and 


THE AKRON 


275 

other uses. A gas stove aids in the preparation 
of well-cooked meals. As for the ride itself, this 
is as smooth as by any means of transportation, 
and even with the eight engines travel is quieter 
than on a railroad train. 

Shortly after being admitted to the Navy, the 
Akron made a five-hundred-mile trip along the 
Atlantic seaboard. Millions of people in New 
York City watched the giant air cruiser sail ma¬ 
jestically up the Hudson as far as the new 
George Washington bridge, then around to the 
south again and over the tall skyscrapers. With 
her new silver coat she was “Silver Queen 5 ’ to 
many on that day. “Air Giant 55 was another 
name given her, for with the Los Angeles as an 
escort, her greater size could be plainly seen. 

“How could she protect herself in time of 
war? 55 was asked by many. Those who had read 
the details of the Akron s construction were able 
to answer; 

“Emplacements have been made for ma- 


276 AIR TRAVELERS 

chine-guns which will protect the great dirigible 
from all angles. Amidships there is a hangar to 
hold five wasp-like airplanes to be used as 
scouts or flying guns. Experiments with the Los 
Angeles have already proved that a dirigible 
can launch and pick up planes while in flight. 
The fighting planes, made especially for speed 
and lightness, will be on the lookout for pos¬ 
sible danger. 

'‘With protection such as the Akron has, any 
vessel that can scout ocean waters at the rate of 
a thousand miles a day, for nearly ten days, 
without refueling, is an important addition to 
any fleet.” 


THE FUTURE 


These brief historical accounts have to do 
with Aviation up to the present time. But the 
work is not yet over. New records are being 
made. There is constant advance in the science 
of exploring the upper air and safely trav¬ 
ersing the spaces of the sky. 

What development the future will bring 
cannot be foretold, but there is sufficient glory 
in what has already been done to entitle to per¬ 
manent honor those who have performed what 
has been set forth. 

With the momentum gained by a past of 
such rapid and weighty achievement, there is 
every reason to believe that great power for 
advancement will come to the world through 
the flying men who shall be the AIR TRAV¬ 
ELERS of the future. 


277 






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